Martus Basics for New Users

Using Martus for your reporting and budgeting needs can be easy if you know where to start and what you are looking for. Use this introductory guide to begin your Martus journey.

Terminology

Account: Accounts are also referred to as general ledger accounts or a chart of accounts. These are the various lines that your organization is utilizing to track different types of spending and income across all parts of your organization. Accounts become lines within reports and on your budget worksheet within Martus. Examples are Software Expenses, Office Supplies, or Travel Expenses such as mileage. 

Dimensions: Dimensions offer various ways to track financial and operational data in an organization. You can think of them as "tags" to classify the data.. Examples of typical dimensions are Location, Department, Class, Project, and Fund.  Every organization will have one or more dimensions set up in Martus.  Each budget item and actual transaction is tagged by one or more dimension values to indicate the location, department, etc. to which it is related. You will see these dimensions and dimension values throughout Martus on your budget worksheets and your financial reports. You will likely only have access to see specific dimension values within your organization based on how your Martus Administrator has set up your account. For example, you might only be able to see your department.

Budget: Your organization may have multiple budgets per year, such as the initial budget, the board-approved budget, and a mid-year forecast.  Within Martus, each budget is a collection of worksheets for the various combinations of dimensions in your organization for a specific fiscal year.  Every budget has at least one and usually many, worksheets.

Worksheets: This is where the work is done to budget within Martus. A worksheet is for a specific combination of dimensions such as a specific department at a particular location, and it tracks all of the the projected income and expenses for the budget period as account lines. Individual managers and directors will have the ability to update one or more worksheets and submit them for approval. For example, the Operations department may manage two worksheets, one for the Waterstone and one for the Smithstone Locations in order to budget for electricity, gas, security, etc.  

Martus Reporting

For reporting you will go to "Dashboard > Financials." Here you can answer questions like:

• How much money did my department spend last month on office supplies?
• Do I have enough money left in my office supplies budget for 10 more cases of paper? 
• Are the expenses for my recent purchases showing up yet? 

Two of the reports available for reporting within Martus are the Income Statement and the Year to Date Budget Comparison reports.  Review the videos below: once you have learned how to navigate one Martus report, the same principles can be applied to other Martus reports.

Understanding the Income Statement Report

Click the time stamp below to jump to a specific topic:

Understanding the Year-to-Date Budget Comparison

Click the time stamp below to jump to a specific topic:

Budgeting in Martus

A well-crafted budget will allow you to spend wisely and make your money go further.  As a budgeting user, you need to know how to use the Budget Worksheet feature within Martus to enter and update the details of your budget. This is where you will enter your budget information per account line.  

Depending on how your organization is budgeting, you may be required to submit your worksheet to be approved by designated people in your organization. At any point during the process, you may want to utilize the Planner Summary Reports to review your budget. 

For more information on Budgeting - Click here to view the Budget Basics Learning Path

The Martus Budgeting Tool - the Planner

The Martus budgeting tool is named the Planner. It is a powerful and flexible budget tool that is also extremely easy to use. 

The following links will walk you through understanding the Planner:

Step 1: 

Create a Budget

Step 2: 

Do the Work of Budgeting

Step 3:

Final Steps for the Budget Year

Want to go deeper? Check out these articles: 

1. Special Purpose Worksheets
2. Creating a budget based on 12-month actuals

Guide to Our Support Tools

Martus' Support Tools include our Knowledge Base and our ticketing system. 

The Support Page and Knowledge Base

Select Support from the main Martus menu, and then click Open Support Website to access the Martus support page, available online 24/7/365. This page opens to a new tab in your browser and provides access to the Knowledge Base and to your support tickets.

• NOTE: Please be aware of the following guidelines for support based on your Martus agreement.
  • If you purchased Martus directly from Martus (not through a Martus Partner), our support team will assist you directly through the ticketing system.
  • If you purchased Martus through a Martus Partner, your support will be handled by the Partner. This means all questions should be sent to your Partner through their support options. If your Partner requires assistance from Martus, this escalation will be handled between Martus and your Partner. Any inquiry sent to Martus will be routed through your Partner.

Support Tickets

From the Home tab, you can view existing support tickets, and submit new support tickets.

When you send in a support ticket, please use the following guidelines so that we can assist you most efficiently and effectively:

• Include one or more full-screen screenshots of your screen, including the URL in the address bar.
• Include as much detail as possible, including steps to reproduce the issue you are experiencing.
• Include attachments for reference, like the Excel files you are importing.
• If something doesn’t seem accurate, show/tell us what you would expect to see.
• If you are getting an error message, include the error and steps to reproduce it.
• If the system seems slow or isn’t responding, explain what you were doing right before that occurred.
• And if you think you need a refresher on an aspect of Martus, just ask!

Providing this information with your ticket may help us to fully address your question with a written response. But if needed, we are always glad to get on a call with you, and having this information helps us be better prepared to assist you.

The Knowledge Base

Use the Knowledge Base to research topics of interest, review documents, view tutorial and explanatory videos, and review previous webinars. The Knowledge Base is available for all Martus users.

Other Ways to Reach Martus Support

You can also log a support ticket by simply sending an email to support@martussolutions.com. Tickets sent via email are tracked within our support system, just as if you’d entered them from the Martus support page.

Occasionally, our Support team will log a support ticket on your behalf. All tickets logged this way will generate an email to you and will be tracked within our support system, just as if you’d entered them.

Our Support Commitment

Our Support Team is available Monday through Friday, 8AM until 8PM US Eastern Time, excluding holidays. Our response time commitment (SLA) is the next working day, although we expect to respond in a much shorter timeframe.

List of Martus Holidays

Martus Support observes the following holidays for 2024:

Monday, January 1 – New Year’s Day 2024

Friday, March 29 – Good Friday

Monday, May 27 – Memorial Day

Thursday, July 4 – Independence Day

Monday, September 2 – Labor Day

Thursday, November 28 – Thanksgiving Day

Friday, November 29 – Thanksgiving Holiday

Tuesday, December 24 – Christmas Eve Holiday

Wednesday, December 25 – Christmas Holiday

Tuesday, December 31 – New Year’s Eve

Wednesday, January 1 – New Year's Day 2025

Subscription Package Descriptions

Essentials

Martus is a budgeting and reporting software package. Martus Essentials is the core functionality of Martus. It includes a set of tools for creating and maintaining budgets collaboratively, along with a suite of pre-built, flexible financial reports to compare budget to actuals. 

As part of Essentials, Martus provides API-based integrations to many accounting systems, including Sage Intacct, QuickBooks Online and Desktop, Blackbaud's Financial Edge NXT, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Sage 100, NetSuite and Acumatica. For customers who have an accounting systems without an API, Martus provides for a file-based integration. 

Some notable features of Essentials include:

• Quarterly and Yearly summaries on the Dashboard and Income Statement
• The Multi-Year Budget to Actuals Report
• For the Income Statement and Planner Summary, the ability to create dimensional or account category reports with a secondary sort and summary on a second dimension or account categories
• The Side-by-Side Budget and Actuals Comparison report supports reporting on up to five budgets or actuals from any years
• The ability to view attachments upon drilldown to the transaction level (if supported by the integration to your accounting system)
• Round, Flat-to-budget, and Move Line options on budget worksheets
• Budget worksheet approvals (without hierarchical levels)

Plus (previously called Advanced Plus)

The Plus subscription includes everything in Advanced, plus a suite of additional features:

• The Forecasting module, with multi-year, what-if analysis by year, and what-if analysis by month
• Reporting groups, and the ability to use them as the basis for calculations within SPWs and within the Martus ReportBuilder
• Approval levels (hierarchical budget worksheet approval)
• Activity logging (and the Activity Log on the Admin Reports menu)
• Planner allocations*
• Personnel requests, within Personnel Budgeting*
• Personnel Budgeting - granular permissions to allow personnel budgeting by individual budget preparers
• Support for budgeting for and reporting on statistical accounts for Sage Intacct, Sage 100 and file-based integrations*

* Features marked with an asterisk must be enabled or configured by Martus Support. Please create a ticket through the Knowledge Base if you are a direct Martus customer, or contact your Martus reseller if you are supported through one of our Martus partners.

Premium (previously called Enterprise)

The Premium subscription includes everything in the Plus subscription, plus the Martus Connector and Cash Flow Forecasting (CFF). CFF includes:

• Features to define default and overrides for controlling the balance sheet impact of budget items
• Balance Sheet Impact reporting
• Projected Balance Sheet
• Statement of Projected Cash Flows

Martus Connector

The Martus Connector provides access to Martus data via Martus' API for use in other visualization tools such as Tableau and Power BI. It includes Power Query instructions and syntax examples.  The Martus Connector is included in the Premium subscription and available as an optional addition to the Plus subscription.  For information about pricing and provisioning, please create a ticket through the Knowledge Base if you are a direct Martus customer, or contact your Martus reseller if you are supported by a Martus partner.

Grandfathered Subscription Levels

• Standard

  • This subscription includes Essentials plus Personnel Budgeting. This subscription level was originally named "Advanced". It was renamed "Standard" in January 2024 to distinguish customers who had not opted to add the ReportBuilder.

• Advanced

  • This subscription includes Essentials plus Personnel Budgeting and custom reporting with the Martus ReportBuilder.  

• Standard Plus

  • This subscription includes everything in Plus except the Martus ReportBuilder.  This subscription level was originally named "Advanced Plus".  It was renamed "Standard Plus" in January 2024 to distinguish customers who had not opted to add the ReportBuilder.

Last updated October 16, 2024.  While we attempt to keep these articles as up-to-date as possible, it is possible a release may have changed product feature/functionality since the time an article was written. 

Training Options and Additional Services

Martus provides many forms of personalized training to our direct clients. 

Implementation Training

When we implement Martus, we provide complete “Train-the-Trainer” training, aimed at developing your own local experts on Martus. 

Implementation Training - Subscription Upgrades

If you upgrade your Martus subscription, as part of that implementation, we provide training on the new features that you'll be using.

Budget Refreshers

As part of our support service to you, we provide an annual budget refresher at no cost, upon request. This reviews all budgeting topics with special emphasis on starting a new budgeting cycle. This refresher is for the "Admin" user(s) in Martus.

Additional Training Options

Contact Martus Support to discuss these options. The cost for these services depends on the amount of time requested.

• We offer end-user training as a service, at a charge of $750 to develop and deliver an hour of training. This training is prepared with the assistance of your own Martus experts! We collaborate with you to plan the training, identify the specific topics to be covered, learn how you use Martus so that we can explain that to your end users, and select the data set to be used for the training session. We deliver and record the training, and provide you with the recording for re-use and review. To ensure the success of the training and set it in context for the end-users, we also will ask you to participate in and facilitate the training session. Additional delivery sessions for this prepared training can be scheduled at an additional charge of $250 per hour.
  
  
• If you need overall training for Martus admins (due to staff turnover or new hires), we can provide that too. Generally, we recommend similar training as is provided at the time of implementation, with a total of 4-5 hours to cover Reports and Setup, Budgeting, and Personnel Budgeting ($250 per hour). Please contact us to discuss your needs and we can tailor training for you. 

Note: Prices and services are subject to change without notice. 

All Training is Recorded

These trainings are all recorded and links are provided to you after the sessions.  

Reseller Clients

All services above are available for all direct clients of Martus. If your organization has purchased Martus through a Reseller, please contact the Reseller directly for assistance with training services.

Optional Features of Martus

Martus has many optional features, including:

• Fund Balances Report
• Martus Connector
• Top Level Budgeting
• Personnel Requests
• Planner Allocations
• Budget Change Requests
• Support for Statistical Accounts
• Multi-Currency Support
• Encumbrances

Since these features are not applicable to all organizations, they are activated by request. Some of these features require a certain minimum subscription level, and some have an additional annual license fee and one-time implementation charge. 

To have any of these features turned on, please create a ticket through the Knowledge Base if you are a direct Martus customer, or contact your Martus reseller if you are supported through one of our Martus partners.

Martus Connector 

This grants access to Martus’ API for extracting budget and actuals data from Martus for use in visualization tools such as Power BI and Tableau. This is available for customers with the Plus or Premium subscription. Full API documentation is provided within the Connector. There is an additional license fee and implementation charge for this feature.  

Fund Balances Report 

This report provides fund balance information. It is applicable primarily to non-profit organizations who make use of fund accounting and wish their Martus users to be able to review restricted fund balances and activity. It is available for QuickBooks integrations where Equity and/or Liability accounts are used to track fund balances, and it is available for Sage Intacct integrations. It is available for some File-Based Integrations (requires specific configurations), and it is not available for Financial Edge NXT integrations or integrations based on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Click here for more information about this report. 

Budget Change Requests 

This provides a hierarchical approval process. It is useful primarily to organizations who maintain a single budget through each fiscal year and is not compatible with business processes for organizations who reforecast throughout the year. Click here for more information. There is an additional annual license fee and implementation charge for this feature.  

Top Level Budgeting 

This feature helps you to budget at a parent dimension level even though actuals are posted to children of that dimension. When budgeting, the reference data section of the worksheet shows the total for all children plus the parent.  Click here for more information.

Encumbrances 

This is available only for Sage Intacct integrations for customers with a minimum of the Standard subscription. When activated, encumbrance totals are shown on the YTD Budget Comparison Report, and details are available via drilldown. Martus’ reporting is based on Open and Pending POs and PRs. To be cleared out of the Martus reports of total encumbered, the POs must be converted to payables. 

Multi-Currency Support

This is available for Sage Intacct integrations for customers with a minimum Standard subscription. There is an additional annual license fee and implementation charge for this feature, and when fully configured, also requires a second Martus instance to reflect the consolidated currency.  Use this link and this link to our Knowledge Base for more information. 

Personnel Requests 

This feature is an addition to Personnel Budgeting. With Personnel Requests, users can request new positions, these requests can be approved or rejected by a designated Personnel Request Approver, and when approved, the requested positions will be added to the default Personnel Budgeting scenario. Use this link to our Knowledge Base for more information. This feature requires a minimum of the Standard Plus subscription.

Planner Allocations 

This feature provides an alternate method of allocations, using a different type of budget called a Pre-Allocation budget. Each worksheet on a Pre-Allocation budget can be allocated on a percentage basis to any worksheet(s) in the default Planner budget. See this article in our Knowledge Base for more information. This feature requires a minimum of the Standard Plus subscription. 

Statistical Accounts 

This feature allows you to budget for and report on statistical account information, as well as using statistical account values as budget drivers. This feature provides an alternate method of allocations, described in this Knowledge Base article.  This feature requires a minimum of the Standard Plus subscription. It is also only available for Sage Intacct, Sage 100, and File-Based Integrations.