government Budget database

[Emario]

Anyone aware of an access database that that is designed for budgets.

 

[jfischer]

Does this government agency need line-item tracking of budgeted/approved "funds"? If so, a custom database is generally called for due to the unique nature of funds and their associated approval processes. If line-item tracking is not required, a general purpose budget feature of a regular accounting system, such as "Traverse" from Open Systems, Inc., would work.

 

[Emario]

thanks for your quick response. No Line item is not needed. We just need to track where the money is going that is allocated and the real issue is that the boss wants pretty charts that give him the "pilots instrument panel". It does not have to be access but that's what I am most familiar with and I have been messing around with the ledger sample but it does not completely do what I need. which is track individual and their respective team(department) in our office. Are you aware any gener ledger for budgeting purposes

 

[jfischer]

A general ledger is typically not designed to track the amount of detail you're describing. Accounting systems use "subsidiary ledgers" that handle the details and pass only summary totals to the general ledger. If you need to track expenses for individuals and small groups, I'd suggest that you use some combination of "Purchasing" and "Job Cost/Project Cost" modules to handle the details. The "Project Cost" module for Traverse allows you to estimate the costs and income for any given project. You could define a project as a budget category, set its estimated cost as the budgeted amount, assign individuals as resources for that project, and let the system track all the actual expense details through normal Purchasing and Time Ticket transactions. The databases are either Access or SQL Server depending on the version. So, the data manipulation for charts in Access or Excel is straightforward.