Key Concepts

Ways to Set Up Budgets

Product Deep Dive

Budgets are the primary control mechanism for spend in Divvy, and give you the capability to assign funds to individuals of your organization. They also give you the peace of mind that overspending is not an option.

If you are approved for a Divvy account, your company will have a single budget. All new users will be added to this budget without a spend limit. If desired, you can create multiple budgets organized by team, location, project, event, or any other expense category.

Let's walk through some key concepts relating to budgets, so you can make sure to set up your Divvy account in the best manner for your business.

Budgets are designed to provide ultimate control and visibility of all spend within your organization. They work best when organized by team, location, project, or event and are flexible enough to meet your organization's needs.

If you'd prefer to watch a quick walk through of budgets, check out this video.

Hierarchy

Admin(s) have the ability to create a budget within the Divvy web app. They can select Owner(s) and Members who will then have access to the budget. The Owner(s) can send funds and approve/deny requests made by the Members of the budget within the mobile app. This makes all spending transparent. You will always know who is spending, and who approved them to spend.

Setting a Limit

When deciding the amount of money to make available for a budget, don't stress yourself out. Make your best guess, and you make adjustments as needed. Divvy makes it easy for you to see who is spending money, and why they are spending it. As time goes on, you will have a much better idea of how much money is actually necessary. You can also have Divvy automatically decline all transactions above a specific level. With a budget, overspending is no longer possible!

Budget Interval

When creating a budget, you can select a budget interval, which determines when the budget limit resets. Budget limits can reset daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, or never.

If you select a daily reset, budget funds reset at the beginning of each day. If you select a weekly reset, budget funds reset on Monday each week. If you select monthly, quarterly, or yearly, budget funds will reset on the first of the month according to the interval that you select. Budget intervals cannot be edited after the budget is created.

Expiring Budgets

You have the ability to set an expiration date for any of your budgets. These budgets will be terminated regardless of how much money was spent. For example, you could create a budget for an upcoming trade show. Set an expiration date to guarantee that funds for the trade show are not used at a later time.

Teams/Departments

Many companies have found it useful to separate budgets by team/department. This can work well if you have a good idea of how much money is allotted to each department such as sales, marketing, finance, etc. At that point it will be up to the Owner(s) of the budget to decide how the funds are spent.

Projects/Events

Have you ever wanted to give the go-ahead on a project, but were scared your team would overspend? This is why creating budgets for individual projects/events is useful. For example, a construction company could set up a budget for a particular road project. Consider making a budget for the company Christmas party or even the upcoming marketing conference. This way, people don't have to ask for permission ahead of time or forgiveness later.

Single Budget

If your company doesn’t require an extended budget structure, you can use Divvy with a single budget. By default, all new users will be added to the main budget, without any spend limit. Budget members will see the phrase “funds” instead of “budget” when they are using Divvy.

Other

What about things such as supplies, equipment, and software subscriptions? Sometimes they fall under a particular team or they might be company wide. Regardless, you can make a budget and invite anyone from any team that might need access as a member of the budget.

From the Budgets page, you can spend data for the entire budget, as well as individual members and cards. To learn more viewing individual budgets, view the Budgets Overview.

Now that you know the basics, let’s learn more about working with budget in the second article of this series.