1. Workstars Support
  2. Operational Tasks (HR)
  3. Budget Maintenance

How to manage Financial budgets

Scott Seipold
Updated

If your recognition program has the Financial Rewards (ex. gift cards, payroll transfers) feature enabled, you will need to load budgets monthly, quarterly, or annually, depending on how you've set it up.

 

Good to know

  • Global configurations must have Point Conversion Rates set for every country before you can add, change, or remove budgets
  • Upcoming Budgets must be in place before the next budget period begins, otherwise Recognitions will be suspended until they are loaded
  • The system will send all Admins multiple email reminders and Warning Notifications on the Administrator Dashboard prior to start of next budget period
  • Budget periods start/end at midnight UTC
  • If you accidentally double-load budgets or load to the wrong budget period, you can submit a Remove CSV to claw back the budgets, or can manually adjust the individual budgets one at a time

How to manually load Financial budgets one by one

  1. Login to your Administrator account
  2. Click Budgets tab, select Financial
  3. Locate correct upcoming Budget Period: Example 01 Jan 2022 – 31 Dec 2022
    NOTE: There is no un-do button if you upload to wrong period
  4. Click Add Budgets
  5. Click Edit Budget, select One By One
  6. Employee: Begin typing budget holder's last name or Position name (job title), depending on your HR Data Sync setting, until recognized, then select them
  7. Budget:  Enter budget amount
  8. Click Add
    Note: If you make a mistake, you can Adjust, Disable, or Delete an Employee's Financial budget

 

How to bulk upload Financial budgets using CSV file

  1. Login to your Administrator account
  2. Click Budgets tab, select Financial
  3. Locate correct upcoming Budget Period: Example 01 Jan 2022 – 31 Dec 2022
  4. Click Add Budgets
  5. Click Edit Budget, select Add (From CSV)
  6. Follow the pop-up instructions, noting requirements for column headers and the downloadable CSV Template you can user to create your Financial budget CSV file 
    NOTE: ID numbers must use all lower-case text to match employee data stored in our system and budget amounts should be whole dollar amounts with no currency symbol or punctuation (ex 1000 instead of $1,000.00)
  7. Select or drop your financial budget CSV file and click Confirm

NOTE:

  • If there are errors in the file format or data, it will display an error message and/or provide an error.txt file with details showing which rows failed, in which case you will need to edit the CSV to fix the failed rows and remove the completed rows to prevent a double upload
  • If a financial budget already exists for the employee, then the value will be added to the existing budget, otherwise a new one will be created
  • If you make a mistake, you can Delete upcoming budgets before the Budget Period begins

 

If you intend to give the same or similar budgets out to a subset of employees (ex. every quarter give 500 points to each Director and 100 points to each manager) each period, you may find it useful to download a budget report from the previous period to use a template for the next period.

How to pull Financial budget report from current period (to use as template for next period)

Note: Make sure your employee data is current before proceeding, otherwise the report may contain empty rows for budget holders who have left the company.

  1. Login to your Administrator account
  2. Click Budgets tab, select Financial
  3. Locate current budget period row, click pulldown arrow, select Analyze Spend
  4. This generates and downloads a report called Budget-Holder-Spend-Analysis-yyyymmdd.csv
  5. Change file name to clearly note this is the Financial budget information, ex Financial budgets yyyymmdd.csv
  6. Open the downloaded CSV
  7. Delete unneeded columns, keeping only the ID (Position ID or Employee ID, depending on your configuration) and Given (points, $, etc) columns
  8. Rename column header Given to Budget
  9. Add rows for any new employees who need budgets
  10. Adjust the budget amounts as necessary
  11. Save the CSV

  12. Follow How to bulk upload Financial budgets using CSV file steps above to bulk upload this new CSV into the new budget period

 

If you are giving the exact same amount to every employee (ex. 10 points per per employee per month) then download a complete Employee list from the Employee tab to use as a template.

How to pull Employee report (to use as template for next period)

Note: Make sure your employee data is current before proceeding, otherwise the report may contain empty rows for budget holders who have left the company

  1. Login to your Administrator account
  2. Click Employees tab, select Employees
  3. Click the green cloud Download CSV button
  4. This generates and downloads a report called Employees-yyyymmdd.csv
  5. Change file name to clearly note this is the Financial budget information, ex Financial budgets yyyymmdd.csv
  6. Open the downloaded CSV
  7. Delete unneeded columns, keeping only the Employee ID column
  8. Add column B header Budget
  9. Fill Budget column with the budget amount for each employee (ex. 10)
  10. Save the CSV
  11. Follow How to bulk upload Financial budgets using CSV file steps above to bulk upload this new CSV into the new budget period

 

You can manually adjust, temporarily disable, or delete a Financial budget holder's balance.

How to adjust an individual Financial budget

  1. Login to your Administrator account
  2. Click Budgets tab, select Financial
  3. Locate Current Budget Period
  4. Click View Budgets
  5. Locate the Budget holder you want to adjust
  6. Click the pulldown arrow to the right, select Adjust
  7. Enter the Value (+/-) to increase or decrease
  8. Enter the Reason, which will be visible to the employee
  9. Click Update Budget

 

How to disable an individual Financial budget holder's budget

  1. Login to your Administrator account
  2. Click Budgets tab, select Financial
  3. Locate Current Budget Period
  4. Click View Budgets
  5. Locate the Budget holder you want to disable
  6. Click the pulldown arrow to the right, select Disable
  7. Click Confirm

Follow same steps to later Enable the budget

 

How to delete an individual Financial budget holder's budget

  1. Login to your Administrator account
  2. Click Budgets tab, select Financial
  3. Locate Current Budget Period
  4. Click View Budgets
  5. Locate the Budget holder you want to adjust
  6. Click the pulldown arrow to the right, select Delete
    Note: This button will only appear if none of the current budget has not been spent
  7. Click Confirm

How to bulk remove Financial budgets using CSV file

  1. Login to your Administrator account
  2. Click Budgets tab, select Financial
  3. Locate the current or future Budget Period needing adjustments
  4. Click View Budgets
  5. Click Edit Budget, select Remove (From CSV)
  6. Follow the pop-up instructions, noting requirements for column headers and the downloadable CSV Template you can user to create your Financial budget CSV file 
    NOTE: ID numbers must use all lower-case text to match employee data stored in our system and budget amounts should be whole dollar amounts with no currency symbol or punctuation (ex 1000 instead of $1,000.00)
  7. Select or drop your remove budget CSV file and click Confirm

    NOTE:

    • If there are errors in the file format or data, it will display an error message and/or provide an error.txt file with details showing which rows failed, in which case you will need to edit the CSV to fix the failed rows
    • If a financial budget exists for the employee, then the value will be removed from their budget

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