Budgets? can i do actual budgets in airtable?

[kera_mchugh]

My guess is maybe NO because the topics that come up on searching “budget” have essentially NO responses…

I looked at a template base called Event Planning & Budgeting…which i thought would help… but i’m simply not following…
I’ve experimented with rollups and things, but it seems like it’s more work and time to do it in airtable if i have to do double entry to get the view i need - eg.enter an expense with its various attributes in one table, and then go and add that expense to the corresponding rollup field in another table…

am i doing it wrong? is there not a way to automatically aggregate based on an IF statement? surely i’m missing something…

my vision is this:

One table for overall budget
one table for expenses
one table for revenues

budget table would aggregate from the other two, with a select field “type” column of revenue or expense which would then be used for the grid view…
budget table would have the high level DEPTs in each type…
then the revenue and expense tables would have: “item ID (primary)”, “item” “amount” “dept” “vendor”

dept rows in budget table would then aggregate the totals…

does that even make sense? I’m not even sure now! lol
My budgets aren’t complicated, but we’re really WANTING to make a wholesale switch over to airtable and these are a BIG piece of our puzzle. We don’t have to calculate projections (much) or do anything particularly fancy… just regular old math… but we do have multi-sheet budgets in excel that usually have an “overall” sheet that aggregates the different pieces of each budget…
and then one massive one that aggregates all THOSE budgets… :slightly_smiling_face:

are we barking up the wrong tree?

[J_B_S]

I’m looking to do the exact same thing as Delaney_Keating. Does anyone here have any insight into how we can get this working?

Here’s an example of what we want to have happen:

1. Expenses Table: We log a new expense, tagging it with the “Office” category (which is done by linking it to the “Office” record from the “Budget” table).
2. Budget Table: The “Actual Expenses” field automatically updates to add our logged expense in the “Office” record. This, in turn, also automatically updates the “Variance” field in the “Office” record.

[Jeremy_Oglesby]

Hi @Delaney_Keating,

This is a pretty old post, so you may have already figured this out, but I think you just need to convert that “Actual Expenses” field to a “Rollup” rather than a “Formula” field.

When you change it to type “Rollup”, it will ask you which “Linked record” field you want to Rollup — you’ll select your “Expenses” field. Then it will ask you which “Field” from the “Expenses” table you want to rollup — you’ll select your “Cost” field. Then it will ask you what “Rollup Function” to use — you’ll use SUM(values).

When you’ve done this, it will sum all of the “Costs” of the “Expenses” you’ve linked to in that Budget category (row). Then you can use that sum to calculate your “Variance”.

[Natasha_Sotomay]

After reading this, I think its similar to what I am trying to do, but I’m still lost.

I have 2 tables: Event Budgets and Event Costs.

In the Event Budget I have every Event for the year listed (approx 70 events). On that table the Columns go as follows: Event Name, Budget, Estimates, Actual, Remaining. In this table, the only number I would (ideally) put in is the Budget (ex: 10,000).

In the Event Costs is every service I paid for related to the event. The columns go as follows: Event Name, Service (printing easel), Service Type (Branding), Estimate, Actual, Date paid…etc. In this table, I would be manually entering every number.

What I would like to do, is have Event Budget look to Event Costs and find all costs related to 1 event, and put that sum into the Event Budget-Estimates (or Actual).

I would like to manage even more things using Airtable, including checklists, staff names etc, because the grid view looks really nice. However its taking me so long to figure it out!

[VictoriaPlummer]

Hello Natasha,

I think what would help here is a rollup field., which will allow you to sum all costs related to an event. Then you can use fields to calculate the difference between the budget and the actual.

I hope this helps.

[Ivan_Carlson]

Yes you can use Airtable to enter a financial budget. Maybe this base will give you some ideas. Accounts - Airtable Universe