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A budget sets your spending and income targets for a period, broken down by cost center, so you can track how actual results compare against plan as the year unfolds. Each budget covers a 12-month period, is built from one or more line groups (one per cost center, with an annual amount spread across the months), and — once active — is compared automatically against the real figures posted to your general ledger. Budgets in Hitaji are cost-center budgets: every budget line is attached to a postable cost center, and “actuals” are pulled from the GL lines tagged with that cost center. If you have not set up cost centers yet, read Cost Centers first — you cannot build a meaningful budget without them. You’ll find this at: /accounting/budgets — in the left navigation under Accounting → Budgets (the tile is labelled Org Budgets).
📷 Screenshot: Budgets list page with the four stat cards (Total Budgeted, Total Spent, Remaining, At Risk), the performance chart, and the budget cards — to be added.

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Multi-business note

Budgets are stored per accounting book. Each business (book) keeps its own budgets and its own cost-center tree, and a budget can only reference cost centers that belong to the same book. Switch the active business in the top bar before creating or reviewing budgets so that you are working in the right book.

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Who can use budgets

Opening the Budgets pages requires the accounting:read scope — the same access that lets you into the rest of Accounting. Submitting a budget for approval additionally runs it through your approval workflow (see Submitting for approval); whether anyone needs to sign off depends on how your approval rules are configured.

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How a budget is structured

A budget has three layers:
  1. The budget itself — a name, a description, a period (start and end), and a fiscal year.
  2. Line groups — one logical line per cost center, each carrying an annual amount and a distribution mode. This is what you edit.
  3. Monthly lines — behind the scenes Hitaji expands every line group into 12 monthly rows (one per month of the period). You never edit these directly; they are derived from the group’s annual amount and distribution, and they always sum back exactly to the annual figure.
Working in line groups (annual figures) rather than typing 12 cells per cost center is what keeps budget entry fast, while the monthly breakdown underneath is what powers the consolidated pivot grid and month-by-month comparisons.

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Creating a budget

  1. Go to Accounting → Budgets (/accounting/budgets).
  2. Click New Budget (top-right). This opens the budget editor on its own page (/accounting/budgets/new).
  3. Fill in the budget header, then add one or more line groups.
  4. Save.
📷 Screenshot: Budget editor showing the name/period header and the list of line groups with their annual totals — to be added.

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Budget header fields

The 12 monthly slots are generated starting from the period start month, so the editor supports both calendar fiscal years (Jan–Dec) and offset fiscal years (e.g. Jul–Jun).

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Adding a line group

Each line group ties a cost center to a planned amount. A budget must have at least one line group.

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Distribution across periods

When you save a line group, Hitaji spreads the annual amount across the 12 months according to the distribution mode you chose:
  • Even split — the annual amount is divided into 12 equal monthly amounts. The rounding remainder is placed on the last month so that the monthly figures always add up to the annual amount exactly (no lost cents). Use this for steady, predictable costs like rent or salaries.
  • Manual — you enter each of the 12 monthly amounts yourself. Their sum must reconcile to the annual amount within one cent, or Hitaji rejects the line. Use this for seasonal costs that vary month to month.
The same cost center can appear in more than one line group (for example one line for “Internet” and another for “Water” on the same Utilities cost center); their monthly amounts simply add together for that center.

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Budget status (the lifecycle)

Every budget moves through a small set of states. The status is shown on each budget card and you can filter the list by it. Key rules the system enforces:
  • You can only edit a budget while it is Draft. Trying to edit a Submitted, Active, or Closed budget is refused (with guidance to cancel the approval or close it first).
  • You can only delete a budget that is not Active — delete an Active budget by closing it first. Deletes are soft (history is preserved).

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Submitting for approval and activating

There are two ways a budget becomes Active:
  • Submit for approval — sends the budget into your approval workflow. If your organisation has no approval rule configured for budgets, it is auto-approved immediately and becomes Active. If a rule exists, the budget sits in Submitted (Pending Approval) until an approver signs off, then becomes Active.
  • Activate directly — promotes a budget to Active. When activating, you can optionally choose to close other active budgets whose periods overlap, so that only one budget is in force for a given period.
You can Close an Active (or Draft) budget at any time to retire it; a closed budget cannot be modified afterwards.

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Tracking actuals: budget vs. actual

Once a budget exists, Hitaji compares it against what really happened in the general ledger. Two related views give you this.

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The budget balance

For any budget, Hitaji computes four figures: Behind the scenes: “Spent” reads the GL by cost center, so it captures everything that posts there — expense bills, petty cash, and crucially payroll accruals — not just requisitions. (Approved/converted requisitions are deliberately not added to Committed, because their spend already shows up in the GL under Spent; counting both would double-count.) Reversed or amended transactions net out, so a cancelled payroll run doesn’t permanently overstate spend.

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Budget vs. actual (per cost center)

The budget-vs-actual view breaks the comparison down per cost center, showing for each one: the budgeted amount, the actual spend, the variance (budgeted − actual), and the variance as a percentage. Actuals for a cost center include its whole subtree, so a budget line on a parent center automatically rolls in spend tagged to its children. Totals across all lines are shown at the foot.

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Over-budget signals

The Budgets list turns these numbers into a quick health badge on each budget card, based on the percentage of the budget spent: The stat cards at the top of the list summarise the whole book — Total Budgeted, Total Spent (with % used), Remaining, and the count of budgets that are At Risk (over 80% spent) — and the performance chart plots budgeted vs. actual per budget. These are informational signals: Hitaji highlights overspend but does not block a transaction for exceeding its budget.
📷 Screenshot: A budget card showing the progress bar, the health badge (On Track / At Risk / Over Budget), and the Remaining / Over-by figure — to be added.

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Consolidated budgets

The Consolidated view turns all of a fiscal year’s budgets into a single pivot grid: the cost-center tree down the rows and the 12 months across the columns, with planned amounts in each cell. Group rows subtotal their children, and the grid carries grand totals per month and overall. To open it, use the Consolidated tab on the Budgets page (/accounting/budgets?view=consolidated). It pulls together every Draft, Submitted, and Active budget for the selected fiscal year (Closed budgets are excluded), so you can see your organisation’s full planned spend for the year laid out by department and month in one place — useful for board packs and year-on-year planning.
📷 Screenshot: Consolidated budget pivot grid — cost-center tree on the left, months across the top, with subtotal and grand-total rows — to be added.
  • Cost Centers — the dimension every budget line and every actual is tagged against.
  • Accounting basics — accounts and the general ledger that “actuals” are read from.
  • Dashboard — where the accounting module starts.