> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.assetinfinity.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Budgets

> Money set aside for a period, and what's already committed and spent against it.

A budget is a register of money set aside for a financial year — separate from
[depreciation](/finance/depreciation), which tracks what the fleet is worth rather than what's been
approved to spend.

## Heads

A budget is a tree of **heads**. A head can be a total carved into smaller heads underneath it, or a
**leaf** — the level money is actually charged at. A leaf head names a
[cost centre](/config/organisation-structure) and, optionally, a site.

Only a leaf with nothing charged to it yet can become a total; the reverse also holds, so the tree
can't end up with money against a branch. Every head belongs to one [fiscal calendar](/config/fiscal-calendars)
and year — the calendar names the head's company, so that isn't asked twice — and is either
**capital** or **operating** spend.

A head opens as a draft and takes nothing until it's activated, at which point its whole sanctioned
amount is released. If your approval process releases money in steps rather than all at once, pull
the balance back out after opening it.

### When it runs out

Each head sets what happens once nothing's left:

| Setting | Behaviour |
| - | - |
| **Block** | Refuses the document that would take it negative |
| **Warn** | Lets the document through and lets the head go negative |
| **Off** | Checks nothing |

## What's on the register

Three things this register leads with, because each is a figure nothing else in the product can see:

* **Over-committed heads** — only reachable on a head set to **Warn**, since one set to **Block**
  already refused the order that would have done it.
* **Sanctioned and never released** — money approved in principle that hasn't been let out, whether
  that's a deliberate staged release or simply forgotten.
* **Heads with nothing pointed at them** — a leaf with a full balance and no documents or entries
  against it isn't necessarily good news; it may just be a head nobody's using.

**Committed** is the money already promised to a supplier and not yet billed — including purchase
requests still sitting in an approval queue, which reserve against the head at submission rather than
at issue. **Actual** is spend after the fact, on every ledger in the product. The two are shown side
by side because they answer different questions.

## Charging documents to a head

A purchase requisition or order can be charged to a leaf head, reserving its estimated value from
submission. A capital project can be **funded from** a head instead — project cost lands on the head
as an actual the moment it's recorded, which is the opposite direction from an order, because opening
a project reserves nothing.

## Amendments and overruns

The **Amendments** tab is the register of changes made to a head after it opened — a sanction
increased, a head split, a transfer between two heads. **Over or late** collects heads that have gone
over and requests to release more against one that has.

<Card title="Capex planning" icon="landmark" href="/finance/capex-planning">
  Where a capital budget's money is often planned before it's opened — a planning round that turns
  proposed schemes into approved spend, and the heads it should be opened against.
</Card>
