Understanding the Budget Hierarchy
The budget editor organizes every account and group into a predictable structure. Once you know the rules, you can find any line quickly and understand why a particular row appears where it does....
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The budget editor organizes every account and group into a predictable structure. Once you know the rules, you can find any line quickly and understand why a particular row appears where it does.
Note: Budgets are staff, board, and PM tools. They are not visible to residents.
The two top-level sections
Every budget grid has exactly two sections, always in this order:
- Revenue - all income accounts and income groups.
- Expense - all expense accounts and expense groups.
Each section ends with its own Subtotal row, and the whole grid ends with a Net footer that shows Income minus Expense.
Ordering within a section
Inside Revenue and inside Expense, rows are grouped and ordered in this exact sequence:
- Custom groups - the groups you create yourself with Add group (see How to create groups), in the order you arranged them.
- GL account-group headers - accounts that share a chart-of-accounts group (set up in GL Account Management) but are not in one of your custom groups. Each header shows the group's subtotal.
- Account-subtype headers - accounts that have no GL account group but do have an account subtype (for example, "Utilities" or "Insurance"). Each header shows the subtype's subtotal.
- Ungrouped - any account with no custom group, no GL account group, and no subtype. This bucket always appears last in its section.
How an account is placed: the decision order
Every account lands in exactly one place, decided in this order:
- Is it in a custom group? If you added the account to a custom group, it appears there and nowhere else. An account in a custom group never also appears under its GL account-group or subtype header - custom-group placement always wins.
- Does it have an active GL account-group? If the account is not in a custom group but belongs to an active GL account group, it appears under that group's header.
- Does it have an account subtype? If it has no active GL account group but does have a subtype, it appears under that subtype's header.
- Otherwise, it lands in Ungrouped.
Tip: If an account's GL account group was deactivated, it falls back to its subtype header (or Ungrouped, if it has no subtype) the same as if it had never been assigned a group.
Subtotals
Every header row - custom group, GL account-group, or subtype - carries a subtotal for its members. Custom groups also carry their own budgeted amount, entered directly on the group row (see How to enter amounts: Split or Monthly); GL account-group and subtype headers are display-only rollups of the accounts underneath them.
Deactivated accounts
If an account is deactivated in your chart of accounts but still has an existing budget line, it does not disappear from the grid. It renders muted (grayed out) so you can still see its historical budget figure, but it is visually distinguished from active accounts.