Creating a Cost Plan
In Allocate, a Cost Plan is a report template in which Fiscal Period data can be used to create a report with the data specified in the Cost Plan. The Cost Plan data contains particular report details, as well as the Report Order, which specifies which structure items are Central or Receiving and the order that those structure items will show on the final report.
In order to create a new Cost Plan, click the Plus Icon (“+”) to the right of the Cost Plan filter in the Navigation Menu. This will open the New Cost Plan dialog. Fill out at least the required field.
Name* - The Name is the name that will be displayed in the Summary and Nav Bar of your Allocate account. This name will not appear anywhere on the report.
Report Title* - This is the name of the cost plan that will display on the generated report.
Plan Type* - In the Plan Type you can describe the purpose of this plan. Is it a 2 CFR plan? Is it a Full Cost Plan? Or is it an Interdepartmental Plan? You can enter whatever plan type you would like.
Notes - This field is for your internal notes about this cost plan. This is strictly for your internal purposes, the content of this field will not populate on the report.
Significant Changes - Here, you can describe any significant changes that relate to this year's cost plan. This is primarily used to point out anything that you would like for an auditor. The changes will be notated in the following report sections; Exhibit C for Full Cost Plans and Exhibit D for 2 CFR Part 200.
For Use Year - The year in which the budget on the plan will be used (this is dependent on your agency and the type of plan you are preparing). Typically for a full cost plan, the “for use in year” will be the year directly following the Fiscal Period have entered your data into i.e. if the fiscal period is 2013-2014, “for use in year” will be 2014-2015. 2 CFR part 200 plans typically are estimated two years in arrears and would show two years after the fiscal year (in this case 2015-2016).
Officer Name - Name of the person responsible for signing off on the plan.
Officer Title - Title of the officer within your organization.
Signature Date - Date on which the final plan is completed.
When you have finished editing your Cost Plan make sure to click SAVE. If you would like to cancel creating a new cost plan click the DISCARD button.
Creating a Report Order
Once you have created your Cost Plan you can now assign a Report Order, by clicking the Report Order button on the Cost Plan card.
Each Cost Plan has a Report Order. The Report Order determines which Structure Items (Funds, Departments, and Divisions) you want to include in this cost plan and which you will be Central and which will be Receiving. It also determines the order that they will appear on the generated report.
To Edit the Report Order:
In the navigation menu, click the View Icon next to the Cost Plans menu item.
Locate the Cost Plan Card for which you would like to edit to the Report Order.
Click the Report Order button in the upper right corner of the Cost Plan Card. This will open the Report Order Menu.
- The Report Order Menu is split into two main sections. The left section, titled Unstructured Items, and the right section, titled Include.
In the Unstructured Items section, there are three headers which can be expanded or collapsed by clicking on them: Department, Division, and Fund. By expanding these headers you will see all of the structure items entered on the related structure item table. That is, anything I have entered into the Departments Table, will show up under the Department header in the Report Order. Each individual structure item is on its own card. For example, Finance, HR, and Parks all have their own cards under the department header. Each card has two buttons: Central and Receiving.
In the Include section, there are two headers that can be expanded or collapsed by clicking on the headers. These are the Central and Receiving headers. You can send a Structure Item card from the Unstructured Item section to either the Central or Receiving sections by clicking the related button on the Structure Item card.
Only the Structure Items that have been moved into the Include column will show up on the report. Central Structure Items are those that are the Support or Administrative Departments, Funds or Divisions whose expenditures we are spreading in the cost plan. Receiving Structure Items are those that are receiving the costs of the support from the Central Structure Items.
Once you have moved the Structure Item cards into the Include section you can then click and drag them up or down to reorder them so that they will appear in the order which you would like on your final report.
Once you have completed editing the Report Order, click the Save & Close button to save the changes or the Discard & Close button to close without saving.
Creating a Fiscal Period
In Cost Allocation, no matter if you are doing a 2 CFR, Full Cost, Citywide or an Interdepartmental plan, you need to specify some period of time for which you are going to collect the expenditures incurred by your Central Structure Items. Whatever that period of time you are collecting expenditures for is what you will define as your Fiscal Period. For example, many cities will use a standard fiscal year. In this case they will use a Fiscal Period of something like "2018-2019". Some Interdepartmental plans are run quarterly. In this case the Fiscal Period could be "Q3 2019". Allocate allows you to define any period of time that you would like when creating your Fiscal Period.
The Fiscal Period contains all of it's own Functions, Expenditures, Labor Distributions, Incoming, Allocations, Direct Billed, and Revenue Reconciliation and must be created before data can be entered into those tables.
In the Navigation Menu, click the + icon next to the Fiscal Period drop down. This will open the Edit/Remove Fiscal Period dialog.
In the lower half of the Edit/Remove Fiscal Period dialog navigate to the Add Fiscal Period area.
In the New Fiscal Period Name field enter the name you would like to use for your new fiscal period. This can be whatever you want, but should somehow represent the time for which you are collecting your expenditures.
Click the + icon to the right of the New Fiscal Period Name field. Your new Fiscal Period will now appear in the upper table and a green message will appear in the right corner of the screen saying "New Fiscal Period successfully saved."
You can also edit existing Fiscal Period once they have been saved to the upper section.
Name - This is the Name entered when the Fiscal Period was created. You can edit this name by simply clicking into the name field and edit the name as needed.
Scenario - With the scenario checkbox you can can designate which of the Fiscal Periods are 'What if?' scenarios and not final cost plans.
Delete - By clicking the X icon in this field you can delete the Fiscal Period. When you click the X icon a dialog will appear asking "Do you really want to delete the fiscal year X?" Click Yes to continue deleting the Fiscal Period, or No to cancel deleting the Fiscal Period. WARNING: Deleting a Fiscal Period will delete all Functions, Expenditures, Labor Distributions, Incoming, Allocations, Direct Billed, and Revenue Reconciliation data associated with the Fiscal Period.
Once you have created your new Fiscal
Importing Common Allocation
Common Allocations are different than other allocations in that these are allocations which will be used for multiple different departments and multiple different functions. Most often these are allocation basis such as Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs) or Total Expenditures per Department. The Common Allocation tool allows these to be entered into Allocate once and then can be called upon where relevant. We will show in later steps how to attach a Common Allocation to a function, but for right now we are going to focus on entering them into the system. Once you have collected your Common Allocations in the Allocate Data Upload Template then you are ready to import into the Common Allocations.
The first step to importing your Common Allocations is to create those Common Allocations in Allocate.
Locate the Common Allocation Details menu item in the Navigation Menu and click the Eye Icon to open the table into the workspace.
Click the “+” button to add a row to the table.
Enter the Short Name. This is a name for the Common Allocation that will only show inside of the software.
Enter the Basis field. This is the allocation basis you are entering. For example, if you are entering FTEs the basis may be “# of Full-Time Equivalents per Department”.
Repeat this process for all of the Common Allocation you intent to Import.
Now, we are going to Import your Common Allocations from the Allocate Data Upload Template.
Locate the Common Allocation Units menu item in the Navigation Menu and click the Up Arrow Icon to open the Import menu.
Click the Choose File To Upload button and select the Allocate Upload Data Template from the directory. Or you can simply drag the Allocate Upload Template into the drag and drop area of the Importer.
In the Select Sheets to Import sections, select the Common Allocations sheet and then click the NEXT button in the lower right corner of the importer window. This will advance you to the Match Columns tab of the Importer.
On the Match Columns tab of the importer, you are matching the columns in the excel to the columns of the table in Allocate. Once on the Match Columns tab make the following selections:
In the Structure Item Name drop-down, select the Structure Item option. With the Allocations upload, we are matching rows in the excel to existing structure items in the software. This can either be done with the Department Name, or the Department Number, or both. To make sure the most matches are found, map both the name and number to the Structure Item field.
In the Structure Item Number drop-down, select the Structure Item option.
In the Common Allocation 1 (Full Time Equivalents) drop-down, select the FTE Common Allocation you created on the Common AllocatioN Details table.
If you have additional Common Allocations, you can map those to their related Common Allocation.
Once you have mapped the fields, click the Next button to advance to the Overview step.
On the Overview tab you can edit and review the data before it is imported into the system. If the system could not find a match to a particular department in the spreadsheet, it will highlight that row with a red outline. To correct the matching, click into the Structure Item field and select the department, division or fund you intended to import that row into.
Once the data looks the way you would like it to be once imported into the system, simply click the Import Sheets button in the lower right corner of the Import window.
WARNING: This will is the final step in the import process and clicking the Import Sheets button will initiate the import process.
You can now open the Common Allocation Units table and make any edits you need, or to simply view the data.
Now that you have created your Cost Allocation Plan, Fiscal Period, and Common Allocations you have now completed Lesson 2. If you wish to continue to Lesson 3, you can simply click here.