Modelling budget scenarios
Scenarios let you model named alternatives, such as a lean year against a full-reserve year, without ever touching the budget itself. Open them from Scenarios in the budget editor. What a scenario is...
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Scenarios let you model named alternatives, such as a lean year against a full-reserve year, without ever touching the budget itself. Open them from Scenarios in the budget editor.
What a scenario is
A scenario is a set of dials laid over the budget. It records what you turned, not what the numbers came out as. Creating, editing, deleting, or reverting a scenario never writes to a single budget line. The budget you are modelling against is exactly as safe as it was before you started.
Because a scenario stores dials rather than figures, its numbers always recompute from the budget as it stands right now. A scenario cannot quietly go stale and show you last week's totals.
Create one
- Go to Scenarios and select New Scenario.
- Name it something a board member would recognise, such as "Lean year" or "Full reserve funding".
- Set the dials. The overall fee and reserve level are shown for each scenario so you can compare them in one glance.
You can keep up to five scenarios per budget. The limit is enforced by the database, not just by the screen, so it holds even if two people are working at once. At the cap the button explains itself: Cap reached (5 of 5). Delete a scenario to add another.
Mark one as recommended
Exactly one scenario can carry the Recommended mark. Marking a new one clears the previous one in the same save, so there is never a moment where two scenarios are both recommended or none is.
Change history and revert
Every scenario keeps a History. It records dial settings only, never computed figures, for the same reason the scenario itself does: a stored figure from three weeks ago is a lie once the budget moves.
Reverting restores the dials from an earlier point. The figures then recompute from the current budget, so a reverted scenario is a live model rather than a snapshot.
Activating the budget
When you activate a budget you choose which scenario it was activated with, and no scenario is always a legal answer. The choice and the activation are recorded together in one step, so the record can never show a budget as active without saying what it was activated on.
Scenarios stay editable after the budget goes active. You can keep modelling next year's options against a live budget without archiving anything.
Who can see this
Scenarios are staff-only. Residents cannot read them, and neither can anyone without budget access on the property.