Written by Nils R. | Jul 10, 2021 7:00:00 AM
What is
an Encumbrance Report for Public Sector Organizations
? Monthly Encumbrance Reports are considered financial analysis tools and are used by CFOs and Accountants to track encumbrances and remaining balances by fund. Some of the main functionality in this type of monthly financial statement is that it enables the user to select any account category, period and fund to see the exact financial status. The columns in the report include: 1) Original (adopted) budget, 2) Amended budget, 3) Monthly actual balances, 4) Year-to-date (YTD) actual balances, 5) Unencumbered balance, 6) Pre-encumbered balance, 7) Encumbered amounts, 8) Remaining unencumbered balance, 9) Percent remaining available, and 10) Percent remaining unavailable. The rows of the report dynamically displays the accounts (object codes) selected by the user at runtime. You find an example of this type of monthly financial report below.
Purpose of
Encumbrance Reports Public Sector organizations use Encumbrance Reports to get an exact picture of their monthly and YTD encumbrances. When used as part of good business practices in Accounting departments, a government entity can improve its financial decisions and analysis, and it can reduce the chances that accounting accuracy is reduced due to lack of clear encumbrance reporting.
Example of an
Encumbrance Report Here is an example of a Monthly Encumbrance Report with detailed pre- and post encumbrance columns and remaining balances. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2560"]
Example of an Encumbrance Report for Public Sector Organizations[/caption] You can find hundreds of additional examples
here
Who Uses This Type of
Monthly financial report
? The typical users of this type of monthly financial report are: CFOs, controllers, accountants.
Other Reports Often Used in Conjunction with
Encumbrance Reports Progressive Accounting departments sometimes use several different Encumbrance Reports, along with core monthly financial statements, encumbrance dashboards, KPI reports, annual budgets and other management and control tools.
Where Does the Data for Analysis Originate From? The Actual (historical transactions) data typically comes from enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems like: Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365) Finance, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (D365 BC), Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics SL, Sage Intacct, Sage 100, Sage 300, Sage 500, Sage X3, SAP Business One, SAP ByDesign, Acumatica, Netsuite and others. In analyses where budgets or forecasts are used, the planning data most often originates from in-house Excel spreadsheet models or from professional corporate performance management (CPM/EPM) solutions.
What Tools are Typically used for Reporting, Planning and Dashboards? Examples of business software used with the data and ERPs mentioned above are:
- Native ERP report writers and query tools
- Spreadsheets (for example Microsoft Excel)
- Corporate Performance Management (CPM) tools (for example Solver)
- Dashboards (for example Microsoft Power BI and Tableau)
Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Cloud Solutions and More Examples
