A budget pool is a group of accounts whose individual budgets are pooled into a lump sum that can be used for any of the accounts' costs. If an account is included in a budget pool, its checked invoices can exceed its annual budget as long as the necessary funds are available in the budgets of other accounts in the pool.

For example, your organization allocates $5,000 for office renovation expenses and $10,000 for office relocation expenses for the year. If you consider one account more likely to exceed its budget than the other but you do not want to adjust the amount of money budgeted for physical office improvements in general, you can add both accounts to a budget pool. Initially, $15,000 is available to cover costs billed to either account. The remaining balance on the budget pool decreases as invoices for either account are checked.

You can create budget pools either of two ways in VertiGIS FM:

•create a budget pool with accounts and a cost type.

•create a budget pool with accounts and cost centers.

You cannot create both types of budget pools in VertiGIS FM. Your organization should commit to one method and configure the product settings accordingly.

Both types of pools require you to associate multiple accounts with the cost type or cost center.

Product Settings

You must configure the Cost and Budget product settings based on the way you want to create budget pools in VertiGIS FM. If you want to create budget pools using accounts with cost centers (shared budgets), the Covered Bond setting must be enabled. If you want to create budget pools using a cost type, the same setting must be disabled. Refer to Product Settings.

Note the following limitations intended to prevent you from creating budget pools with both methods:

•if there are budget pools with accounts and cost centers (shared budgets) in the system, you cannot turn off the Covered Bond product setting.

•if the Covered Bond product setting is enabled and there are budget pools with accounts and cost centers (shared budgets) in the system, you cannot create cost types with the Covered Bond setting selected (i.e., you cannot create budget pools with accounts and a cost type).

For this reason, VertiGIS FM recommends your organization decides which method it wants to use to create budget pools before adopting either of the methods described above.