Budget Vs. Actual Summary Report by Activity

Dear NetSuite user,

This is further to my email on the 04/11/2021.

As part of the NetSuite enhancements, we are happy to release our next system enhancement/ improvement. This relates to enabling users across the secretariat to pull the budget vs actual report by activity. For those who would rather see a video we have developed a video that takes you through all the steps required to set up and run this new report. Hope you like this.

11.Step by step on how to use the Filter.mp4

Challenge

The challenge identified was that although most users at IPPF are familiar with activity wise budgeting and monitoring, the current set of reports available for project managers/ divisional leads within NetSuite did not enable them to generate activity wise budget vs actual. This led to the current reports not being user friendly and thus leading to following challenges:

Inability to monitor and manage activity wise spends against budget leading to overruns/ underspends of activity wise spends, going undetected.
Delays/ inability to present a realistic assessment of projected spends for quarterly forecasts.
Donor financial reports being prepared and maintained in excel – leading to mismatch between these reports and actual spend position as per NetSuite.

Key Reason

On review of the system, we realized that the prime reason for not being able to extract the activity wise budget vs actual reports was inadequate needs assessment undertaken and thus NetSuite being used to generate only standard reports available. This report was thus never configured and saved as ‘save search’ to make these readily available as a dashboard.

Solution identified

Report to generate project wise/ activity wise/ funding restriction wise by each office in different currencies, has now been configured/ set up and is readily available as ‘saved search’ to be made available on individual dashboards.

Solution available from

The link shared in this release note is now available for all to download and create as a dashboard. A step-by-step approach to set this report up as a dashboard on NetSuite, is provided in the following few paragraphs.

What do I need to do differently?

Following the above changes, a user will have to take the following steps to extract this report and set it up as a dashboard.

Log into Netsuite, locate the ‘Shortcut portlet’ on your home screen landing page. This looks like the screen shot provided below.

Place the cursor on the shortcut portlet to identify 3 vertical dots. Take the cursor to these dots and click on “Add new shortcut” from the drop down menu.

A window as shown below will pop up

On the name field, Type “Budget Vs Actual Report by Activity”.

In the URL field, paste the link provided below https://4533524.app.netsuite.com/app/reporting/reportrunner.nl?cr=2035&reload=T&whence=

Click on the ‘Save’ button on the top left-hand corner of the screen.

The report link will be saved on your dashboard successfully.

You can now access the report by clicking on the link saved on your dashboard. The report that will pop-up is presented as a screenshot below

In order to access different types of reports (on the same format) users can use the following additional filters:

Fund Restriction: Use this filter to generate reports for a type of funding, ‘Unrestricted’, ‘Restricted’, or ‘earmarked’.
Activity code: Use this filter to generate the report based on the specific activity code under one project. For example: under project 18.P0388, there are various activity from P0388.A1 to P0388.A14, using this filter you can choose any one or multiple activity codes, instead of whole project.
Project Code (New): Use this filter to generate specific project (s) reports. For example, you can select 18.P0388 in isolation or a combination of 18.P0389, 18.P0390 etc projects. (‘18’ represent the year when the project was created, ‘P’ represents the project, and the rest ‘xxxx’ digits are auto generated by the system as a unique number.)
Project Id: This filter is same as above, however for ease of use, in case users are knowledgeable about project codes, they could select projects sorted in serial number. For example: P0543, P0544, P0545, P0546, P0547, P0548 and on.
Division/ Unit: Use this filter to generate report for a Division/ Unit within the office.
A combination of the following two filters is required to be used, based on the office and currency in which the report is to be generated. In case you wish to generate a report
1. in the local currency of the entity (you belong to), you select your office under both the ‘Regional Office’ and ‘Subsidiary context’ dropdown.
2. in US$ (which is the reporting currency of IPPF), select your office under the ‘Regional Office’ drop down and select ‘IPPF Secretariat (Consolidated)’ in the ‘Subsidiary context’ drop down.
Period filter: Use this filter to generate report for a specific period, i.e. from when to when, for example Jan 2022 to Sep 2022, or Sep 2022 to Sep 2022.
Column: This filter is used to change the ‘view’ of the report, in terms of what you would like to see in columns. As a the ‘Total’ numbers are selected in the column. However if you wish to have month-wise/ subsidiary wise break up – you could set the report up accordingly.

After selecting all the desired filters, click on refresh button at the bottom right of the page and wait for the report to load.

(for a step by step approach on how to generate your preferred report, kindly see the attached document and follow the steps provided.)

Impact of the Change

The expected impact of release of this report is:
1. Project teams/ managers have a better oversight on their project budgets as the budget vs actual report will contain information by:

Project
Activity
Funding restriction
General Ledger codes

Divisional leads/ Regional Office leads to have better oversight on projects/ activities spending across the entire division/ office.
Global leads to have better oversight on relevant project (s) across all secretariat offices.

This release is expected to enable users to access and download data from NetSuite, in line with their own requirements.

If you experience any problems, please contact NetSuite Support @ doduor@ippf.org