How to copy budgets

Today’s #TipTuesday comes to you courtesy of a question on the GPUG open forum about how to copy a budget in Dynamics GP.

Method #1 – Export/Import

The method described in one of the thread answers is exporting the budget you want to copy and then importing it back in with a new Budget ID.

Does it work? Absolutely, it does, and if this method works for you, keep using it.

Method #2 – New Budget based on existing Budget

Here’s another approach to copying a budget, using Fabrikam budgets as the example.

First, open the Budget Selection window (on the Financial navigation pane > Cards > Budget). This is the list of your budgets in whatever GP company you’re logged into. It doesn’t matter what Budget ID you have selected on the window here so ignore what I’ve got highlighted below.

On the toolbar, click on New > Using Budget Wizard for Excel.

In the first window of the wizard, type in a ID and description for your budget. I’ll pretend it’s “Budget 4” I want to copy and I’m calling this “Budget 4 v2”. I’ve chosen 2017 since that is the year of the sample data budget I’m copying. Click Next.

This is the key window to this method. Select the “Other Budget Percent” option to copy from an existing budget. Click Next.

Once you’ve selected that as an option, this is the window that you would get next. Here is where you can choose the Source Budget ID and % change (or no change). I am selecting Budget 4 as the one I want to copy and “No change” to indicate I want a 100% copy of that. This is an easy way to create a scenario with +/- a % of an existing budget to quickly see what it looks like.

“Copy accounts from the source budget ID” is enabled by default, which should stay selected for this purpose.

On the next two screens of the wizard I did not take screenshots because I did not change anything. Those steps are for including Actual amounts for comparisons (optional) and confirming which G/L Accounts to include (which I wanted to copy verbatim for this purpose).

At the end of the wizard, it actually exports the new budget to Excel for you so there is some prompting for where to save the budget. If you are copying in order to make some minor adjustments, it’s ready for you to edit and import. If for some reason you just wanted a copy, the budget is now there in the list.

Both methods work fine and the reality is, if you’re copying a previous budget to make changes, you will want it in Excel at some point anyway. This does both the creation and export in one step, which is nice if you need to get the ID confirmed to set up your columns in FRx, Management Reporter or other financial reporting software.