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Bill Ennals

This question if for Odoo V11 CE.

I understand the way in which we use analytic accounts to track income and expenditure and the way in which we enter 'Budget Lines' for each individual component within each Budget.  I also understand the reasons why  each 'Budget Line' has an analytic account associated with it.

I kind of understand how we might want to give each 'Budget Line' a label that would indicate whether it's an income or expense that we are anticipating, and I get that 'Budgetary Positions' provide a way to label each line accordingly.

What I don't understand is how the accounts from the General Ledger chart of accounts that we associate with 'Budgetary Positions' function with respect to budgeting in Odoo.  

Is there a report somewhere that compares the analytic account budget to journal entries for the specified general ledger accounts?  Given that multiple budgets might relate to one budgetary position though, I'm not sure what the point of the report would be anyway.

There seems to be very little explanation of budgetary positions in the official Odoo docs, or anywhere else that I've found on the internet for that matter.  Can anyone give me some clues as to what they are for?

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Bill Ennals
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This is a summary of the answer and comments provided by Lars Aam to this question (thanks Lars).

The budgetary positions act as a type of restriction on what can be recorded in the 'practical amount' column in a budget.

Each budgetary position can have any number of accounts from the general ledger (the main chart of accounts) assigned to it, though it must have at least one. 

If you record a journal entry that has an analytic account assigned to it that is included in a budget line but a general ledger account that is not included in the budgetary position for that same budget line, it will not appear within the 'practical amount' column of that budget line.

As Lars points out, for many users it will make sense to create two budgetary positions - Income and Expense - and include all of the general ledger accounts likely to have income booked to them in the Income budgetary position, and all of the general ledger accounts likely to have expenses booked to them in the Expense budgetary position.  This way, the chances of journal entries not being captured by budget tracking (when they are intended to be) is reduced.

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Lars Aam
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The budgetary positions is the summary lined in your Budget.

In the budgetary positions you define which account in your chart of account that belongs to this line in your budget.

We choose to have on Budgetary posite named Income, and then you have all sales account assigned.

Another called Cost. And there you assign the account relevant for cost.

Then we get Income minus cost and a sum = result.

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Bill Ennals
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Thanks for answering, but I don't think that really explains what function the COA accounts that are associated with the Budgetary Position have. For example, is there a report that draws upon data that is booked to the COA accounts and displays it in some way that is relevant to the budgeting process? As far as I can see, the budget setting and 'budget versus actual' tracking processes occur exclusively in the analytic accounts.

Here's another way of putting it. Let's say I have a budgetary position (Costs) with one expenditure account (Expenditure 1) assigned to it. I create a budget with one budget line which has 'Costs' as it's budgetary position and 'Project 1' as it's analytic account. I then create a Vendor bill with 'Project 1' as it's analytic account, but a different expenditure account (Expenditure 2) for bill's expense account. What happens then? What impact does this have on the budgetary position or budgets that include it in their budget lines?

Lars Aam

In V11 the budget is excluselively for analytic account. In V12 the analytic account si no longer mandatory. So it is possible to create budgets also on the total business. At least in Enterprise edition. (For community I don't know).

For sure - To get reported in the budget the account must be assigned to you budgetary position. If you post to another account, it is not reported in the budget.

So what we choose is to assign all income accounts to a budgetary position Named Income, and all costs account to an budgetary position named Expenses. Be aware if you change your chart of accounts!

But this also give you the possibility to make alternative sums, that you do not have in other financial reports.

Bill Ennals
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Ahh...so you're saying that it acts like a type of constraint, so that if I record a journal entry with an analytic account that is included in a budget line, but a general account that is not included in the budgetary position for that same line, then it won't actually show up as an entry in the budget.

I just checked and I think you're right. Thank you. It's a shame some of the documentation couldn't have explained that more clearly.

Ray Carnes (ray)

Thanks Bill - I have made suggestions to improve the documentation based on your feedback at https://github.com/odoo/documentation-user/pull/354

Bill Ennals
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You're welcome Ray.