Moving to a New Budget Year - for Personnel Budgeting

Making the Transition 

When you started using Martus’ Personnel Budgeting, you used the Pay Data File and the Pay Item Grid to load personnel information into Martus. Now, you’re ready to do personnel budgeting for the next year! 

This document provides a guide to the best way to create your base scenario for the upcoming fiscal year.  

Before You Start the Move to a New Year

Take these steps before you start the move to a new fiscal year:

• Review your pay types under Personnel Budgeting > Pay Types
  • During the past year, Martus has released many significant enhancements to Personnel Budgeting, including percentage pay types and personnel allocations. Recent changes include adding support for percentage bonus to be budgeted by employee anniversary or in a specific month, and the ability for a percentage pay type to be calculated on the basis of Regular, Hourly, and Percentage pay type.  If you did not use those features in your last budget cycle, we recommend that you review them now to see if they could be useful to you!  See the Knowledge Base for documents and tutorials related to these topics. Please contact Martus Support to review these features if you need more information.
• Review your allocations under Personnel Budgeting > Allocations
  • In a recent release, Martus has improved the Personnel Allocations module so that you can efficiently enter all allocations for a single employee (or other allocation source, such as a position type, dimension, or pay type) on a single screen -- even if those allocations only last for a few months, or if they vary from month to month.   If you have employees (or other allocation sources) with multiple allocation segments, you will probably wish to combine these into a single segment for that employee. 
• Review your insurance coverages under Personnel Budgeting > Pay Types
  • Look for your pay types within the column of Default Value / Tier base for pay types marked as ‘Coverage 1’ and ‘Coverage 2’ if you have elected to use them both
  • Martus supports two coverage types on the employee, so you can use one coverage type for health insurance (for example), and the second coverage type for other insurance benefits such as dental and vision.  
• Ensure that you have a budget in place for the new fiscal year within Planner > Planner Setup
  • This can be a blank framework budget – or it can be partially or completely filled out – but you must have worksheets in the new year’s budget in order to create positions that are to be budgeted in the dimensions used to define those worksheets. 

Getting Started

The first step is to correct any employee names (reflecting marriages, etc.)  Make these changes directly in Martus under Personnel Budgeting > Employees

Then, export the final scenario from the prior year. This creates a Pay Data File that contains employees, position and pay item data for the previous year, plus with the config data and other set-up information. 

Martus recommends that you update the config data and other set-up information directly in Martus. This is not a requirement; you can choose to update this information in the Pay Data File and re-import it.  Our recommended procedure is documented below. 

Delete all pages from the Pay Data File except the Employees, Positions, and Pay Items pages. (Optional: You can also delete the Pay Items page if you will be using the Pay Item Grid to import all pay information.)

Update the Set-Up Information within Martus

Review and make any needed changes to the Config for the upcoming year.  If you have an Advanced Plus subscription to Martus, set the upcoming year as the Personnel Budgeting year. 

Review and make any needed changes to position types. 

Review and make any needed changes to pay types:

• For any pay types with a frequency of “Once”, update the Start Date to indicate the month in which those costs are to be budgeted in the upcoming fiscal year. 
• For any percentage pay types with a limit, update that limit if necessary. For example, if you use a pay type to calculate the employer responsibility for social security taxes, you’ll probably need to change the limit to reflect the limit based on the current social security max wage tax base.
• f you’ve added any pay types that are to be used as the basis for percentage-based compensation costs, update the appropriate percentage pay types to include the new pay types as a Source. 
• Employees and Positions
• Review the list of employees on the Employees page of the Pay Data File 
• Add any new employees.
• dentify any employees that will need to be inactivated.  They cannot be inactivated with the Pay Data File and will need to be inactivated from the Employees selection within Martus. However, don’t make that change yet. That needs to be one of the last updates that you make! 
• eview the list of employees on the Employees page. 
• Review the list of positions on the Positions page of the Pay Data File.
• If a position is held by a different employee, update the employee name associated with the information.
• If you’ve made changes to position types, review the types assigned to each position and update if necessary.
• For any positions that are part-time during the fiscal year (such as interns or seasonal positions), review and update the start/end dates for the upcoming fiscal year.
• Add any new positions.
• Delete any positions no longer needed.

Pay Items

Decide whether you will use the Pay Items page of the Pay Data file or the Pay Item Grid in order to import compensation costs.   

If using the Pay Data File to import pay items:

• Update the employees assigned to positions where necessary. 
• Delete any lines associated with inactive employees. 
• Review and verify all rates.
• Import the Pay Data File.

If using the Pay Item Grid to import pay items:

• Delete the Pay Items page from the Pay Data File you have built (so that it contains only the Employees and Positions pages), then import the file.
• Use Martus to inactivate any employees who are no longer active. 
• Verify that all pay types are correct and updated for the new fiscal year, then export a Pay Item Grid template and populate it with the rate information from your payroll system.
• Import the Pay Item Grid.

Common Errors

If you get errors like this when importing the Pay Data File: Worksheet doesn't exist

They indicate that the necessary worksheets are not present in the default Planner budget for the new fiscal year.

Go to Planner > Planner Setup > Worksheet Management and click 'Add Worksheet' for the dimensions that you are trying to set the employees personnel lines to budget to. 

Once the worksheets exist in the default Planner budget, import the Pay Data file again. 

Personnel Allocations

If you used Personnel Allocations in the prior year, copy the allocation to the current year. Review and update that allocation, deleting any segments that are no longer used and changing target allocations as necessary. You can also now export the current allocation, make changes, and import new allocation values. 

Set the Default Scenario

If you have an Advanced Plus subscription to Martus and will have non-Admin users accessing personnel budgeting information, identify the default Personnel Budgeting scenario.