Budget Assist

Budget Assist helps you create budget forecasts from actual financial data. It analyzes a client's historical Profit & Loss, applies configurable growth and inflation assumptions, and produces a draft budget that can be reviewed, adjusted, and posted to ERPNext as a formal Budget document.

How It Works

1. Source actuals — Kraal pulls P&L data for a prior period you specify (e.g., last quarter or year-to-date).
2. Apply assumptions — default growth rates are applied per account type (revenue growth, expense inflation). You can override these.
3. Generate draft — an itemized budget draft is created with one line per leaf account, showing prior actuals and suggested amounts.
4. Review & adjust — you can modify individual line items before saving.
5. Adopt to ERPNext — once approved, the budget is posted to ERPNext as a draft Budget document.

Generating a Budget Draft

1. Navigate to the client's Finance view.
2. Open the Budget Assist panel from the toolbar or Command Center launcher.
3. Select the source period — the date range of historical actuals to base the forecast on.
4. Select the target period — the date range the budget will cover.
5. Optionally adjust:
   • Revenue growth % — percentage to grow revenue accounts (default: 3%).
   • Expense inflation % — percentage to inflate expense accounts (default: 2%).
   • Industry profile — optional preset that adjusts assumptions for specific industries.
6. Click Generate Draft.

Kraal produces a line-by-line budget showing each account, the prior actual amount, the suggested budget amount, and the method used.

Understanding the Draft

Each line item in the draft includes:

Field	Description
Account	The ledger account name (always a leaf account, not a group)
Account kind	Revenue or expense classification
Prior actual	The actual amount from the source period
Suggested amount	The AI-calculated budget target
Method	How the suggestion was derived (e.g., "prior actual plus revenue growth")
Confidence	Confidence level of the suggestion (high, medium, low)

Multi-entity support

For clients with multiple entities (subsidiaries), Budget Assist generates drafts scoped to a single entity at a time. Each draft contains only accounts belonging to that entity — there is no cross-contamination between entities.

Select the target entity before generating:

• Accounts will be specific to that entity (e.g., "Sales - MCL" for Meridian Consulting LLC).
• The resulting ERPNext Budget is created under the correct company.
• You can generate separate budgets for each entity independently.

Saving a Draft

After generation, click Save Draft to persist the budget in Kraal. Saved drafts:

• Are stored with full audit trail (who created, when, what assumptions were used).
• Can be revisited and edited later.
• Do not affect ERPNext until explicitly adopted.

You can save multiple scenario drafts (e.g., "conservative", "aggressive") for comparison.

Requesting Adoption

When a draft is ready to become a formal budget:

1. Click Request Adoption Review.
2. The draft enters an approval workflow.
3. An approval request is created and visible to authorized reviewers.

Approval decisions

Reviewers can:

• Approve — creates a draft Budget document in ERPNext (docstatus 0, not submitted). The budget can then be reviewed and submitted directly in ERPNext when ready.
• Deny — returns the draft to editable state. You can revise it and request adoption again.

What happens on approval

• Kraal creates the ERPNext Budget as a draft (docstatus 0). It does not submit the budget automatically — this gives you a chance to review it in ERPNext before finalizing.
• The budget is created against the correct fiscal year, company, and cost center.
• Only leaf accounts (not group/parent accounts) are included in the budget.

Postability Rules

A draft must meet these requirements before adoption can be requested:

• At least one positive budget line — empty or zero-line drafts cannot be adopted.
• All accounts must be leaf accounts — group (parent) accounts are automatically filtered out during generation.
• Valid fiscal year — the target period must fall within a configured ERPNext fiscal year.

If a draft does not meet these requirements, the adoption button is disabled and a message explains what is needed.

Workflow States

State	Meaning
Draft	Just generated, not yet saved
Saved	Persisted in Kraal, editable
Adoption Requested	Awaiting reviewer approval
Under Review	Returned from denial, can be re-edited and re-requested
ERP Draft Created	Approved and posted to ERPNext as a draft Budget

Best Practices

• Use recent actuals — the closer your source period is to the target period, the more relevant the suggestions.
• Review before adopting — AI suggestions are starting points, not final answers. Adjust lines that don't match your client's plans.
• One entity at a time — for multi-entity clients, generate and review budgets per entity to maintain clean separation.
• Compare scenarios — save multiple drafts with different growth assumptions to present options to your client.
• Don't submit in ERPNext until ready — Kraal creates budgets as drafts intentionally. Submit them in ERPNext only after final review.

Troubleshooting

• No line items generated — the source period may not have P&L data for the selected entity. Verify that transactions exist for that period and entity.
• Adoption button disabled — the draft has no positive budget lines. Regenerate with a period that has actual revenue or expenses.
• "Budget cannot be assigned against Group Account" — this should not occur with current versions. If it does, regenerate the draft — group accounts are automatically filtered.
• Wrong entity accounts appearing — ensure you selected the correct entity before generating. Each entity's accounts are suffixed with the entity abbreviation (e.g., "- MCL", "- MDL").