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In my last blog I introduced some of the features for managing External Training in PD Place™ and promised to expand upon these in subsequent posts. In today’s blog I’ll touch on budgets and funding allocation features which, in our latest version of PD Place, have been greatly improved. The budget capabilities have also been extended to the software’s In-Services section.
Budget
First, to view and maintain budgets, you must have Paymaster privileges. The Budget screen can then be accessed from “My Page” via the “View/Manage Budgets” link in the Paymaster section. A typical screen looks like this (click to enlarge):
From here you can add or maintain any number of budgets. Something else to remember: associated with each budget are allocations for fiscal periods or a unique date range. These budgets and their associated allocations are global, meaning they represent the total dollar amount available within your organization regardless of how much funding you have allocated to individual employees. They can also include expenses from external training and in-services.
For example, in the screencap above we have a budget labelled as “Special Training Budget” that is associated with a internal budget code of “8989006768758″ and has $8,000 allocated to 2010 and $10,000 allocated to 2011. This screen can also be used to view a running total of the dollars already used.
In External Training, one can choose the budget to be used for tracking supply and reimbursement expenses. This is identical to the capability that existed in PD Place version 3.7.
In In-Services, the Expense screen (associated with each in-service) now incorporates the ability to allocate individual expense types to in-services budgets for real-time tracking. The In-Service Expense screen also features the ability to assign expenses per registrant. These too are tracked against the budgets defined in same-named screen.
Funding Allocations
Funding allocation is only applicable to External Training and provides additional functionality in the management of what individuals can spend within specified fiscal periods or unique timeframes.
To view and maintain funding allocations, you must have External Training Administrator privileges. The screen you’ll need for this task is accessible from “My Page” via the “Funding Allocation” link in the External Training Administrator section. Below is an example of a Funding Allocation screen (click to enlarge):
It’s here that you specify the employee groups to whom the funding applies, the time period for which the funding is applicable, and the dollar amount. You can also specify the full- and half-day rates for supply teacher costs. Note: you can set up any number of funding allocation records, and separate funding allocation records can be set up for each type of external training group.
In the above example all employee groups expect “consultants” have been allocated $500 which that can spend between Jan 1, 2010 and Dec 31, 2011. The system will monitor their external training expenditures and will not allow them to exceed this allotment during the period specified. The system will also monitor the overall budget described above and will not allow the individual to spend their allocation if no overall budget remains.
If we consider the budget and funding screens used as examples, an elementary teacher could spend up to $500 on external training anytime during 2010 or 2011 as long as the overall budget of $8000 in 2010 and $10,000 in 2011 have not been maxed out.
The combination of Budgets and Funding Allocations provide a very powerful set of tools for controlling expenses and managing allotment of budgets.
