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The budgeting module is framed as participatory resource stewardship: budgets are something a team steers, not something handed down and then defended.

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Budget periods and structure

A budget period is usually a financial year. Within it:
  • Budgets belong to a department, a team, or a project.
  • Categories group line items — personnel, materials, external services, travel.
  • Line items carry the planned amount, the actual, and the variance.
Actuals arrive from the modules that spend the money — approved expense reports deduct from the relevant department budget automatically.

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Five methods

The module does not assume one budgeting philosophy.
Last year’s figures plus an adjustment. Fast, familiar, and the right choice when the underlying activity is stable.
Every line justified from zero each period. Slower and more honest — it surfaces the spend nobody remembers approving.
No fixed annual number. A rolling forecast is updated as reality arrives, so the plan stays useful in November instead of becoming a fiction in March.
Costs driven by activities and their volumes rather than by organisational lines. Useful when the same team serves several very different demands.
The people who do the work propose how the resources are allocated, and the group decides. This is where the module connects to decision making.

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Forecasts

A forecast is a dated projection against a budget. Multiple forecasts per period are normal under Beyond Budgeting — each one is a snapshot of what the team believed at that point, kept rather than overwritten, so you can see how expectations moved.

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Proposals

A proposal asks for resources: an amount, a rationale, and what it is for. It runs through a decision method — consent, systemic consensus, dot voting — and the outcome becomes a budget line if it passes. The record keeps the rationale next to the number, which is what makes the following year’s review a conversation rather than an archaeology exercise.

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Reporting

Per budget and per period: planned against actual, variance in absolute and percentage terms, and the trend across periods. Personnel-cost figures respect salary visibility — an aggregate that would let a viewer derive an individual salary they are not allowed to see is not shown.

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Turning it off

FEATURE_BUDGETING=false hides the module on installations that budget elsewhere.