Execute

After you have completed the planning, the management phase begins: in this phase, you begin executing on your activities and manage the corresponding investments.

As a first point of reference, the expected spend amounts are entered in the Forecast columns. You start with the amounts you entered in the Plan columns during the planning phase. You can perform this transfer either manually or by an import, see Forecasting. The amount is automatically tagged with the Forecast status.

After forecasting, quotations are obtained. These amounts are usually maintained in a third-party system and imported into the PO columns. By comparing the Forecast and PO cells of a line item, you can recognize whether you need to allocate more budget to the line item, or can allocate the excess budget to another line item. For more details on POs, see Manage purchase orders (POs). How reallocate budget is described in Reallocate investment funds.

As soon as you have placed an order, you can assign the status Committed to the amount in the Forecast cell. This signals that your organization is now contractually obligated to pay the amount, but the money has not yet been spent. At this point, the amounts in the Forecast and PO cells should be identical.

Once the money is to be paid, you can enter the paid amount in the Actuals column, either manually or by an import. After creating the actuals, you set the status of the Forecast cell to Occurred. For more information see Manage actuals.

To perform these tasks effectively, you should first set up your workspace according to your needs: see Set up the workspace for details.

When managing investments, data from external systems is usually required, for example from accounting software. To avoid time-consuming manual transfers, you can import this data. See Import data for details.