Tracking Expenses, Funding, and Budgets with Landscape

Landscape can be used to track all aspects of your Land Conservation project, including funding, budgets, and expenses.  For a quick primer on tracking those things through a Project, take a look at the intro to Projects article.

This article examines how funding, budgets, and expenses can all be tied together, as well as how you can generate reports which neatly summarize the information.

Funding

Funding is added through the 'Funding' section of either a Property record or a Project.  If you'd like to see a list of all funding sources, disbursals, or agreements, you can use views (change the dropdown menu to 'All Funding Sources'), or use the 'Funding' button on the left side panel of the dashboard to search available funding sources and make new ones:

 

 

Another way to add a new funding source or agreement is to start from the 'Funding Expectations' section of a Project or from the 'Purchase Price Funding' section of a Property record. Click on the (+) button to get started, and search for the existing source by starting to type in the 'source' box. If the source doesn't exist yet, you can click the (+) button to add a new one.  Choose the appropriate agreement, if applicable. If the agreement doesn't exist, you can click the edit (mceclip1.png) button to go to the Funding Source record and add an agreement. 

Agreements are how you track specific amounts associated within funding sources. It is not necessary to use agreements if you don't need to track them.  Add an agreement using the (+) button where it says 'Funding Agreements'.  

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From the Fund Source Details page you can also add more data, like a description, contacts and agreements.  

 

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From the agreement editor, you can add more details associated with the agreement.  "Identifier" can be used for an ID number or name.  The "Amount" field is "Applied On", "Approved On", "Executed On", and "Ends On" are all date fields.  

 

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Budgets

Budgets can be tracked as part of a Project, although it isn't necessary to make a budget in order to track expenses. 

Budgets are typically made up of multiple items.  An item is tied to work by giving them the appropriate category, allowing you to track your expenses vs your budget as you progress through a project.  For example, to budget $450 for title work on a project, go to a project goal, then click the (+) button next to Budget, then and select the 'Title Work' category.  The quantity will be '1' since we anticipate only having to do the work once, and you can fill in $450 under 'Unit Cost'.  The 'Amount' column shows the calculated Quantity x Unit Cost, and 'Actual' displays the sum of those expenses as tracked in completed work items.

 

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Work Categories can be changed via Settings --> Work --> Cost Categories.  From this menu, you can add and delete cost category groups and the items within them. You can also add items to existing categories, and tie those items to materials.  

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As you add items to your goal budget, you will see the amount updated on the budget tracker.  The numbers under budget are displayed as $Total Expenses/$Total Budget ($Budget Variance): 

 

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After building your budget, you'll want to track expenses.  

Expenses & Completed Work

Expenses are monitored in Landscape by tracking the work associated with them.  If you're familiar with Property records, you can think of adding completed work as another way to add a Property Asset, since the completed work record will be added to the property asset page of the Property. 

For example, once the title work for the goal is done, add a new work item under 'Completed Work' by clicking the (+) button.

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The 'Add Work Item' menu opens.  Choose 'New Work' if you want to add a new item, choose 'Existing Work' if the item has already been added as a Property Asset.  Choose the appropriate type from the drop down menu.  If you do not see the appropriate item, you can add a generic 'Property Asset'.  *Tip: If you want to track staff hours, personnel and their associated hours can be tracked with the 'General' work type.

 

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The asset page will open after you click 'OK'.  Fill in the relevant details associated with the work.  At the bottom, there is an 'Expenses' field.  

 

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Fill out the relevant details.  The correct category must be selected in order to tie the expense back to the budget.

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In this case, I've entered the actual expense as over the original budget.

 

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Press the mceclip9.png to head back to the goal.  

Back in the goal, you'll see that the budget tracker has been updated with the amount.  In this case, you can see that the Title Work item  is over the amount budgeted for that item.

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Tying Expenses to Funding (entering a disbursal)

Navigate back to the completed work item.  Next to the entered expense, click on the mceclip11.png

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The Funding tracker will open below expenses. Click the (+) button to add a new disbursal.

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From the funding disbursal editor, enter the source, agreement (if applicable), as well as the amount and other relevant details. 

 

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Back at the funding page, the disbursal has now been recorded with that particular funding source agreement:

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Funding Reports

The Landscape Reports function can be used to summarize funding sources, agreements, and their disbursals.  A default funding report template is included in all new accounts*.  To run this report, go to Views and change the drop down menu to 'All Funding Sources' (1), select all records by clicking the top check box (2) and click on the export button (3).

*If the report template isn't available to you, contact support to request it.

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Choose the 'Funding Sources' template and click 'OK'.

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The resulting report displays all of the sources, agreements, and disbursals from those agreements:

 

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