When creating or editing a budget template, there are five available budget template parameters to choose from:

•Year

•Quarter

•Month

•Vendor

•Phase and Task Codes

Three of these parameters are time-based: Year, Quarter, and Month. If any of these parameters is included in a budget template, all budgets created with that template will default to budgeting by year, and not by life of matter.

Important: Any time you create new task or expense codes, you must edit your existing templates to include the new items. They will not be inherited automatically.

Budgeting by Life of Matter

To budget by life of matter instead of by year, the Default Time Period setting in Budget Settings must be set to Life of Matter. See Budget Settings for more information.

Additionally, life of matter budgets must be created using a budget template without any time-based parameters (Year, Quarter, and Month). Life of matter budgets have no fiscal year. Instead, budgeting is done by vendor or codes or both.

Budgeting by Year

Budgets created using a template with a time-based parameter (Year, Quarter, and Month) will be budgeted by year. Values budgeted to months "roll up" into quarters, which in turn "roll up" into fiscal years.

Budgets created using a template with only vendor or code parameters will still be budgeted by year if the Default Time Period setting in Budget Settings is set to Year.

Note: If you want to enable budgeting by internal expense or task codes, you cannot budget only by the Year parameter. You must budget by Quarter or Month, or Vendor or Phase and Task Codes.

Budget Parameter Hierarchy

When multiple budget parameters are included in a budget template, the budgeted values "roll up" into the other budget parameters, based on the following hierarchies. These hierarchies cannot be restructured.

Matter (Actuals)

•Year

oQuarter

▪Month

•Vendor

oCodes (Task and Expense Categories)

•Internal Expenses

oExpense Categories

•Internal Tasks

oTask Categories

Matter (Allocated)

The hierarchy for time-based parameters in allocated matters is listed below. However, not all time-based parameters are necessary. Any included time-based parameters will automatically include its parent parameters, up to the fiscal year. For example, if only Quarter is selected, both Quarter and Year will be used.

•Year

oQuarter

▪Month

The hierarchy for non-time-based parameters in allocated matters is listed below. If any time-based parameters are included as well, the following non-time-based parameters will be placed in the hierarchy under the last child time-based parameter.

•Vendor

oCodes (Task and Expense Categories)

•Internal Expenses

oExpense Categories

•Internal Tasks

oTask Categories