Budgets

Budgeting lives on the client's Finance Budget page ("Plan, drafts, and variance" in the Finance sidebar). It is one place to see the active budget, start or generate a new plan, edit the draft line by line, and request the approval that activates it.

The Budget page

• Active budget — the status card at the top shows the plan currently in force: revenue, expense, net income, and account counts, plus its source, currency, ERPNext link, and when it last synchronized. When there is no active budget yet, the card says so; if budget data can't be read right now, it says "Budget data is temporarily unavailable" rather than showing stale numbers.
• Start a budget — shown when there is no draft in progress. Three ways to start, plus import: From prior actuals (with Revenue growth % and Expense inflation % assumptions), From the existing ERPNext budget, or Start blank. The panel names the fiscal year it targets, and you can edit every line afterwards.
• Need a starting plan? — the generator: pick an Industry profile for sensible default growth rates or type your own percentages, then click Generate draft.
• The draft grid — edit annual and monthly amounts, add notes, include or exclude lines, remove rows, and re-phase amounts across months. Save your changes or discard them.
• Version picker — when more than one version exists, each is labeled "v{n} · FY {year} · {status}" so you can switch between them.
• Approval — Request approval is the only route to activation. It stays disabled while you have unsaved changes ("Save your changes first.") or while accounts still need mapping; once requested, activation happens when the approval is resolved.

The Finance period selector applies on the Budget page, because generation targets the selected period. When prior-year actuals cannot be read, the comparison columns are left blank and the page says why.

Generating a draft from actuals

1. Source actuals — Kraal pulls P&L data for the same period one year before your selected target period.
2. Apply assumptions — growth rates are applied per account type. Industry profiles set defaults: General operating business (3% revenue / 4% expense), Professional services (6% / 4%), Retail (4% / 5%), E-commerce (8% / 6%). Type your own percentages to override.
3. Generate draft — an itemized draft is created with one line per leaf account, showing the prior actual, the suggested amount, the change, the method used, and a confidence level.
4. Edit — adjust any line directly in the grid; suggestions are starting points, not final answers.

Different period lengths are handled for you

If the source and target periods differ in length (for example, budgeting a full year from six months of history), Kraal scales the suggestions to the target length and adds a warning to the draft explaining the adjustment. Prior actuals always stay the literal amounts from the source period.

Draft warnings

Read the warnings block on every generated draft — it lists anything Kraal could not do cleanly rather than hiding it:

• Unclassified accounts — accounts Kraal could not classify as revenue or expense are carried forward at their prior amount with no growth applied. Review these lines directly.
• Period-length scaling — the source and target periods differ in length, so suggestions were scaled.
• Line cap — very large charts of accounts are capped at the most material lines; smaller excluded lines remain in summary totals.
• Limited history — the source period had few usable accounts; review every line before requesting approval.

Budget lifecycle

Status	Meaning
Draft	Editable in the grid; not visible anywhere else
Pending approval	Approval requested; activation happens when it is resolved
ERPNext draft created	The budget has been posted to ERPNext as a draft Budget document
Active	The plan in force — what the Active budget card and variance read
Superseded	Replaced by a newer activated version; kept for history
Archived	Retired from the active list; kept for audit history

Kraal creates ERPNext Budget documents as drafts — it does not submit them on its own. The Active budget card's ERPNext fields show the linked document state and the last synchronization.

Multi-entity clients

Budgets are scoped to a single entity at a time. Each draft contains only accounts belonging to that entity, and the resulting ERPNext Budget is created under the correct company. Select the entity before generating, and build each entity's budget independently.

Tracking variance

The Budget page's variance card compares the active budget to actuals and shows Variance ready when live plan-vs-actual data is available. For account-level detail, run the Budget vs. Actual report from the Reports view — or ask for it in ChatIQ as a structured request (an optional as-of date picks the fiscal year, and the report covers that whole fiscal year).

Troubleshooting

• No line items generated — the source period (one year before the selected period) may not have P&L data for the selected entity. Verify that transactions exist for that period and entity.
• Request approval is disabled — save your changes first, or resolve the accounts that still need mapping; the button states which it is waiting on.
• Variance not showing — variance reads from the active budget. Confirm a version is Active (not Draft or Pending approval) and that the ERPNext link on the Active budget card is healthy.
• Wrong entity accounts appearing — ensure you selected the correct entity before generating; each entity's accounts carry its own suffix.