"Cash" and "Budget"

It is sometimes helpful to mentally separate cash and budget when dealing with budgeted self-supporting accounts.

You can think of cash as you would of your checking account. That is, cash is your balance after the last time you balanced your checkbook, plus your deposits, minus your ATM withdrawals and the checks you've written. In terms of your account, cash is your beginning balance, plus revenue, minus expenditures.

You can think of budget as you would a charge card (e.g., American Express). Based on your income, assume your charge card company gives you a $25,000 spending limit and your full balance is due the end of each month. If you spend $10,000 in March, you must be able to write a $10,000 check to your charge card company at the end of March. In terms of your account, your budget is similar to a spending limit - you can't exceed it, and you must be able to cover the amount you use. So, if your budget is $25,000, then you can't spend more than $25,000 during the fiscal year. If you spend only $10,000, you must have at least $10,000 of revenue by the end of the fiscal year.

Determining the status of your budgeted self-supporting account

Use FIMS or ADVANTAGE to quickly see what shape your account is in.

In FIMS, click on the "Account Summary" tab. The bottom row, titled "Total Cash Balance", indicates the amount of cash in your account.

In FIMS, the "Allocation" column is your expenditure budget. Subtract the amounts in the "Expenditures" column and the "Commitments" column. The difference is your budget balance, which is sometimes referred to as unused budget or unused allocation.

In ADVANTAGE, use the APP2 screen, the RSUM screen, and the ESUM screen. The APP2 screen is your cash screen. On it you will find your opening cash balance (i.e., the Current Modified APPR field), revenue, encumbrances, expenditures, and available cash. The RSUM screen indicates your revenue budget and the amount of revenue you've actually received. Similarly, the ESUM screen indicates your expenditure budget, encumbrances, expenditures, and unused budget.