How to Activate a Budget
Activating a budget makes it the live budget for its fiscal year. Only one budget can be Active per fiscal year. You need Manage permission to activate. Activate a Draft budget You can activate a...
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Activating a budget makes it the live budget for its fiscal year. Only one budget can be Active per fiscal year. You need Manage permission to activate.
Activate a Draft budget
You can activate a Draft two ways: from the Budget list tab, or directly from the full-page budget editor.
- In the left sidebar, go to Accounting, then Budget.
- Click the Budget list tab to see all budgets grouped by fiscal year, and click Activate on the Draft's row - or open the Draft in the editor and click Activate, the primary button in the toolbar at the top of the page.
- A confirmation dialog appears. It lists what will happen when the budget goes live.
- Review the details and click Activate budget.
A budget needs at least one category or account
A budget with nothing in it cannot be activated. One category or one account, anywhere in the budget, is enough. You do not need one in each of Revenue and Expense.
Amounts are never the problem. A line deliberately budgeted at zero is a legitimate figure and will not hold activation up. Only an empty structure does. Add a group (How to create groups) or a single account and try again.
Activating with a scenario
If you have modelled scenarios against this budget, activation asks which one you are activating on, and no scenario is always a valid answer.
Choosing a scenario does change your numbers. Its per-category overrides are written into those categories and across all twelve of their months, so the budget you activate is the scenario, not the draft you were looking at. Accounts inside a category are not rewritten; the category's own figure is.
Everything about that is recorded in accounting history: the activation itself, which scenario it was activated on, and a separate entry for each category whose amount moved, showing the figure before and after.
If you want the draft to go live untouched, choose no scenario.
When activation is refused
- "Scenarios are still loading. Try activating again when they are ready." The scenario list has not finished loading. Wait a moment and click Activate again.
- "Scenarios could not be loaded. Retry loading them before activating." The scenario list failed to load. Reload the page so it can try again, then activate.
Both of these exist so a budget is never activated while URBI is unsure which scenario, if any, it is being activated on.
See Why Can't I Activate This Budget? for the rest of the conditions that can block activation.
What changes once a budget is Active
- The budget's status badge changes from Draft to Active.
- It becomes the budget driving the Budget vs Actual view for that fiscal year.
- The row action changes from Continue editing / Activate to Edit, and you can still make changes after activation.
- Reallocations, percentage adjustments, and monthly edits all apply against the Active budget from this point forward.
One Active budget per fiscal year
If a fiscal year already has an Active budget, the Activate button on other Drafts for that year is disabled. To switch to a new budget, archive the current Active one first, then activate your Draft. See How to make a new budget when one is already active for the full walkthrough.