Budgets and Funds
Budget and fund administration can be accessed via Administration > Budgets or Funds under the Acquisition parameters heading, or Acquisitions > Budgets or Funds links under the Administration heading on the left-hand sidebar.
A library can have multiple active budgets at one time. Each budget must have at least one fund.
New and Duplicated Budgets
To create your first budget, or a budget using a different structure than was used in previous years, see the Koha manual for creating a new budget.
If your library wants to use the same structure in its budget for a new fiscal year/period, you can duplicate a budget so that you won't have to re-create each fund. Once it is duplicated, you will be able to edit the details for each fund.
Keep in mind that if your library has unreceived orders that you want to receive in the new fiscal year and/or if you want to move unspent money to the new budget, the fund structure in your new budget must mirror the one you are moving from.
If your library will have two or more budgets active at the same time that share fund codes or names, we highly recommend editing your fund names (names only - not codes) to indicate the budget year, since the names aren't always nested under their applicable budgets in Acquisitions drop-down menus. For instance, if your FY23 and FY24 budgets both have an AUDIO fund with the display name 'Audio', you could make the descriptions 'Audio FY23' and 'Audio FY24' so that you will know which one to choose when creating or receiving orders. See 'Using funds' below for steps to edit a fund name.
Closing Budgets
In this Koha tutorial, we will through closing a budget and the options for moving the unspent funds, unreceived orders, and making the budget inactive.
Go to Acquisitions > Budgets > Actions
Creating a New Budget
Create a new budget before closing the old budget. Under the Action button next to the Budget, select Duplicate.
The options for the duplication process:
- Date Range for this Budget
- Altering the Name of the Budget
- If the Amounts of the Budget Should be Change by a percentage (positive or negative)
- Make the Original Budget InActive
- Set all Funds to Zero
One thing to remember is that in order for the unreceived orders to be automatically moved to the new budget, the fund structures in the previous budget must exist in the new budget. These funds MUST be the same.
Closing a budget
Now that a Budget has been created for the next fiscal year, the previous budget can be closed and the unspent funds and unreceived orders can be moved.
- Select ‘Close’ you will be presented with a form.
- Use the ‘Select a budget’ drop down to choose the new budget for the unreceived orders.
- Check the box for ‘Move remaining unspent funds’ to move the unspent amounts from the funds of the budget being closed to the selected budget.
- Once you have made your choices, click the ‘Move unreceived orders’ button. You will be presented with a dialog box that says
“You have chosen to move all unreceived orders from (your current budget name here) to (the new budget name you are creating)”.
You can’t undo this action, so double check everything first.
- Finally, you will be prompted to continue. It will let you know that the old budget is being closed and the new budget is your new selected budget.
- Budgets without unreceived orders cannot be closed. Make the budget inactive.
- Closing the budget doesn’t make it inactive. Once you finish, you will want to go back to the original budget you are closing and edit it to make it “inactive”.
Editing Budgets
The Koha manual describes how to edit budgets, including changing amounts, locking budgets, and making budgets inactive. Keep in mind that if a budget is locked, funds cannot be added.
Handling Multiple Budgets
Budgets are entered into Koha via administration and can be made as granular as the library chooses. Koha allows for multiple budgets. Each budget has at least one fund and then funds can be broken down further into sub-funds if needed or wanted. Budgets and funds can also be branch-specific.
Koha will track all expenditures and encumbrances against budgets as orders are placed in the acquisitions module. Budgets and funds can be adjusted as needed throughout the fiscal year. At the end of the year, a budget can be duplicated to easily create the same breakdown for the following year. This allows for less ‘work’ year after year, it is a curated section of Koha allowing libraries to focus on other important areas of the library.
Setting up Multiple Budgets
- Navigate to Administration --> Acquisitions --> Budgets
- When viewing the main budget administration you will see two tabs, one for active and one for inactive budgets.
- Staff can create multiple budgets within Koha by clicking New Budget
- View a full tutorial on creating a budget below
Budget Administration
Within Koha's Administration, you can modify multiple budgets, add, edit or delete funds, and establish plans for the budget.
Viewing Multiple Budgets
Within Koha's Acquisitions home, you will be able to view multiple budgets, their funds, amount, ordered, spent, and total available. Staff will also be able to filter by a library or search within the budgets.
Editing Funds
A staff member can edit a fund/subfund at any time. To do this, go to Acquisitions. Click on the Fund that you would like to edit. Under the Actions options, Choose Edit.
From here, all the fund information can be edited, such as amount, users, statistic codes, etc.
Using Funds
To edit a fund from Administration > Funds (under Acquisitions parameters) or Acquisitions > Funds (on the left-hand sidebar under the Administration header), click the Actions button and then 'Edit'. As noted above, if you have duplicated a budget or have multiple budgets with the same fund names, we highly recommend editing fund names (not codes) to indicate the budget year or some other distinction. For instance, instead of having FY23 and FY24 funds both called 'Young Adult', you would keep both codes as YA but could have the display names 'Young Adult FY23' and 'Young Adult FY24'.
Splitting Funds
Koha does not currently have the functionality to split one line item in an order into more than one fund. A library can make adjustments to funds when they receive an invoice or change the fund at time of receipt, but, for example, it is not possible to apply two funds to one purchased item.
This has been a requested enhancement in Koha, filed in Bug 35465 - "Ability to select multiple funds for a single order." Several of our library partners are seeking to crowdsource development this enhancement; further information is available on our crowdsourcing site.
Budget and Fund Tracking
The manual describes how budgets and funds appear in the Acquisitions module, and how you will use them to track expenditures. On the Acquisitions home page, the 'Ordered' column will contain amounts for items that are in baskets, but have not yet been received. This applies regardless of whether the basket is open or closed - as soon as the order line is created, the amount will show in 'Ordered'. When items are received, the cost automatically moves to the 'Spent' column. You can click on any amount in the 'Ordered' or 'Spent' column to see a list of order lines that make up that total. From there, you can click into the 'Title' column to go to the bib, the 'Order' column to modify the order line, or the 'Vendor' column for the vendor's record. For funds with many ordered or received items, you can use the Search box to find what you need.
Any changes to order lines - for instance, modifying an order line to select a different fund after the order has been placed or upon receipt - will automatically be reflected in the applicable 'Ordered' and 'Spent' columns.
Related Articles
Tracking Donations in Koha
Donations can be tracked through either the Acquisitions Module or within the Item Record. Acquisitions This requires setting up a separate Donations Budget and Funds. Navigate to More > Administration > Acquisitions > Budgets Click the ‘New’ button ...Ordering and Receiving with Koha's Acquisitions Module
Broadly, the workflow for non-EDI ordering in Koha is: Create a basket Add materials to basket Close basket Receive orders Close invoice For more information about the EDI process, see EDI - Library Setup and Workflow. Placing orders Adding material ...General Acquisitions Configuration
System Preferences The Koha manual discusses Acquisitions system preferences, and individual system preferences are covered in the relevant Acquisitions topic posts. Note that although the manual says the default is [Don't use], ...Budgeting for Electronic Resources in Koha
This article describes how libraries can account for electronic resources in their budgets using Koha's Acquisitions module. The instructions below assume familiarity with Koha's Acquisitions module, including creating budgets, vendors, and baskets, ...Purchase Suggestions in Acquisitions
Koha's purchase suggestion functions can help libraries manage suggestions, simplify ordering in Acquisitions, and keep patrons informed of the status of their suggestions. For an overview of the process from start to finish, watch Monday Minutes: ...