What Are Budgets?
Budgets in Motivosity help employers manage and allocate funds across different programs. This feature enables users to:
Set and configure budgets
Monitor remaining budget amounts
Track budget usage and program allocation
Implement different budgets for different programs
With budgets, organizations gain better control over fund distribution and approval processes, ensuring financial transparency within the platform.
How to Set Up a Budget
To create a budget:
Navigate to More > Setup > Money Management > Budgets.
If budgets are enabled for the first time, a default budget will be created with 0 points, assigned to the main admin, and applicable to all employees. Otherwise, select the "+ Budget" button to start creating a new one.
On the first setup page, you will be able to enter a title and description for your new budget.
Next, you can designate a single owner for this budget, any number of administrators, and then any users that should be eligible to participate in the program to which the budget is assigned.
Budget Membership Definitions:
Budget Owner: Is responsible for the management of the budget including updating settings and amounts.
Program Administrator: Are allowed to use a budget as a source of funds when setting up programs.
Budget Members: Members of the budget are eligible to participate in any program to which the budget is assigned.
These roles control budget activation for programs, including Milestones, Spot Bonuses, Awards, Achievements, Peer-to-Peer, and Sweeteners. Users without access to a specific budget cannot modify related program settings.
Finally, you can set the various financial settings of your new budget. These include:
The initial balance your budget should be created with
Whether or not the use of these funds should be considered taxable
A low balance warning for when your remaining budget crosses a certain threshold
An optional cost center identifier to appear in financial dashboards and reports
And then a setting to dictate what should happen to the budget if the balance reaches zero.
Once finished, you can select 'Create Budget' to save it and have it added to your list of other existing budgets.
Updating a Budget
Depending on what within your budget needs updating, you can change just about any of the settings and preferences that were designated when first creating the budget.
For a quick adjustment to the budget's current balance, you can select the pencil 'Edit' icon next to where the remaining budget amount is shown and will have two options:
Set a new budget amount:
Define a new total budget amount, which can be applied immediately or scheduled for a future date.
Adjust the balance:
Enter a positive or negative amount to add or remove funds. Positive transactions can be scheduled, but negative ones must be immediate.
If you are looking to update any of the budget's other settings, such as the name, description, participating users, etc., you can click on the three dots to the right of the budget's details and then select 'Edit Settings' to reopen the three different setup pages that you went through when first creating the budget.
Tracking Budget Usage
To monitor budget usage, you can click on the 'Details' button next to any created budget. This will bring you to a report (normally found under Insights > Money > Budget Details Report) where information such as transaction histories, descriptions, amounts, and running budget balances can be viewed.
A new dashboard (coming soon) will also provide projections on year-end usage and highlight areas where budgets may have excess funds.
Programs That Support Budgets
The following programs can support one active budget each:
Peer-to-Peer
Spot Bonus
Sweeteners
And these programs are able to support multiple budget assignments:
Milestones: Each milestone group can have its own budget
Awards: Each award can be tied to a different budget
Lifestyle Spending Account: Each program can have its own budget
Gifting: Each program can have its own budget
Funding Based on Points Distribution (Coming Soon)
Motivosity will introduce an automatic funding option, ensuring companies record expenses in the correct period. This method will debit the employer's funding source for the net points distributed each month, eliminating unfunded liabilities.