Overview
Jet Budgets is a web-based solution for streamlining and controlling the budget creation and fiscal planning process.
Jet Budgets enables collaboration, improves accuracy, and saves time for budget owners at small and medium businesses whose current budgeting process requires managing multiple spreadsheets that can be messy, error prone and time consuming.
Jet Budgets is built to immediately integrate with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Dynamics NAV, and Dynamics GP.
As budgeting can be a daunting task for many organizations, we suggest a general on-boarding process to help you get started.
Process
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Start small (small group of people, single budget)
Pick a lead person; this is the individual who will become the Subject Matter Expert (SME) for the software. This person should be a Budget Owner/manager and should also be someone who uses Jet Reports.
A budget has one Budget Owner (the SME). The rest of the team will be collaborators who will work with the SME.
This group should gather to discuss your organization's current process and determine what is working and identify those aspects of the process which need to be refined.
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Set expectations
This is a new process for you (especially if this is your first time trying to apply any budgeting process). Expect that mistakes will be made. You'll want to complete a test run before you try implementing your "live" budgeting process.
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Familiarize the team with the product and using Jet resources
Once you have ensured that the latest version of Jet Hub has been downloaded and installed, it is time to familiarize yourselves with the product. The Jet e-learning module on Jet Budgets and the Jet Budgets knowledgebase articles (especially Best Practices and the FAQ) can help get you going.
You'll want to perform a walk-through so that the entire team can observe the process flow as well as specifics about the product. Discuss and questions that may arise. Download the available Sample Reports so that you can develop idea about what you can do with your budgeting data.
Here are some important terms that are used throughout the product:
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Structure - The budget structure provides the framework to help you understand and manage your budget. Maybe you want to organize your budget by location. Maybe by product line. Maybe you have many budgeting categories. Maybe just a few. Taking time to determine HOW you want to organization your budgeting data can really help you, in the long run,
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Work Items - Work items are created by the Budget Owner and define what data is going to be entered for some part of the budget. Work items can be assigned to the Owner or to a "Contributor" (once sent to the assigned Contributor, you cannot re-assign that work item to a different Contributor).
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Templates - Templates are reusable forms that can make the Jet Budgets data entry process much easier. Templates allow us to set accounts/dimensions/segments ONCE and then re-use that structure multiple times for different Work Items.
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Identify and assign roles in the Jet Budgets process
There are three User Roles used in the Jet Budgets process:
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Budget Owner - The Budget Owner can create, edit, enter data into, and approve budgets.
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Collaborator - A Collaborator can be assigned work items by a Budget Owners and enter data for the budget.
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Approver - An Approver (assigned to a work item by the Budget Owner) can review and approve/reject budgets and modify work items.
Use the the Jet Administration Console to set up your users. Make sure that each user can log into Jet Hub. A Jet Hub admin will want to configure the SMTP settings for each user and the Budget Owner can then add those users to the budget process.
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Test drive your budget with the small team (hands-on budget creation)
If you can, use an old budget to create a new one in Jet Budgets (this can make getting started a simpler process). Next, add users to your budget
Once users have been added, create a simple budget structure (consider doing a structure outline, first), create your work items, and - as a team - decide what to practice in your "Test Drive" budget session (see the checklist below).
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On-boarding checklist
Once you are ready for your test drive, here are the basic steps involved in the budgeting process. Your team will probably want to ensure that everyone involved is comfortable with all the steps.
- Designate Jet Budgets SME - Owner
- Identify the budget team
- Review Jet Budgets materials
- Assign roles – Contributors and Approvers
- Create Users (within the Jet Admin Console)
- Add Users to Jet Budgets (within Jet Hub)
- Create a budget
- Set up the structure
- Create work items (be sure to assign some to "myself" while assigning some to "others")
- Enter data (using both Excel Online and an installed version of Excel)
- Have the Approver approve and reject some submitted work items
- Add comments/notifications to work items
- Run a simple report at the end of the process
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Perform a post-test review on the practice budget
Once the team has worked through the on-boarding checklist, discuss the results of your test.
- Which parts of the process went well and which were more difficult?
- What could be done to make the process easier or to improve the final results?
- Should the team take another look at the e-learning module for Jet Budgets or consider scheduling more in-depth training?
Reminders to attendees
It is important to maintain familiarity with your tools and your processes. Jet Budgets provides you with both a framework to use as well as a great deal of flexibility for how you use it.
Make sure you stay up-to-date with software updates. Like all Jet Global products, Jet Budgets will receive regular updates.
If you need to, contact Jet Global to schedule training.
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