Budget PlanningBudget Planning View

Understanding Budget Planning

The Budget Planning view allows you to manage your marketing team budget.

Marketing Budget Plans View

View Structure

The view consists of:

  • Budget Insights Panel
  • Budget Grid
    • Overall Totals
    • Categories
    • Line Items

Budget Insights Panel

Located at the top of the view, this panel provides:

  • Overview of total marketing budget allocation
  • Remaining budget to be planned
  • Key metrics about your budget status

Total Budget Card

The Total Budget card shows your annual marketing budget allocation in your organization’s default currency. As an admin, you can click the card to adjust the total budget amount.

Remaining Budget

The “Left to Plan” card displays how much of your total budget remains unallocated. This automatically updates when you:

  • Add new line items
  • Modify existing amounts
  • Change the total budget

Budget Status Metrics

Two key metrics help track your budget progress:

  • Items to Approve: Shows the count of line items still in “draft” status
  • Budget Approval Rate: Displays the percentage of total items marked as “completed”

Budget Grid

The main section where you manage your marketing budget data. It consists of overall totals and categories with their line items.

Categories

Categories organize your marketing budget into logical sections. Each category displays category totals and line items belonging to it.

Managing Categories

  • To create a new category, click “Add Category” in the header
  • To edit a category, click on the category name to modify:
    • Name
    • Description
    • Access settings for your teammates

Before deleting a category, note that this will:

  • Remove all line items in the category
  • Delete historical data
  • Remove associated permissions
  • Cannot be undone

Line Items

Creating Line Items

To add a new line item:

  1. Click the “Add Item” button in the header
  2. Fill in the required fields:
    • Name: Enter a descriptive name
    • Category: Select from existing categories
    • Currency: Choose from available currencies

Additional properties can be set up later by editing the line item.

Line Item Properties

Marketing Budget Line Item

Each line item includes:

Basic Properties:

  • Name: Identifier for the line item
  • Status: Track progress (Draft/Active/Completed)
  • Owner: Assign responsibility
  • Category: Organizational grouping
  • Currency: Set specific currency for this item

Custom Properties: Based on your needs, you can add custom properties of the following types:

  • Single-choice dropdowns
  • Text fields
  • Numerical values
  • True/false options

Currency Management

The platform supports multiple currencies:

  • Each line item can have its own currency
  • All amounts convert to your default currency for totals
  • Fixed exchange rates can be set in the currencies settings

Access Control

Etropo allows you to set category-based access to ensure sensitive financial information is only accessible to authorized team members. You can decide which parts of the budget each user can view and edit. There are types of user accounts: user, and admin.

Admin

As an admin, you have full access to the budget planning system. This means you can:

  • See and manage all categories and line items
  • Create new categories and modify or delete existing ones
  • Control who has access to which categories
  • View all budget insights and totals
  • Set and adjust the total planned budget
  • Work with any line item in the system

User

Your access to the budget depends on which categories you’ve been given permission to view. Here’s what this means:

  • You’ll only see the categories you have access to
  • You can only work with line items in your accessible categories
  • Your budget insights and totals will show data just from your categories

When you don’t have access to all categories:

  • Your budget insights will only include totals from categories you can see
  • You don’t see neither Budget Insights section, nor Budget Totals
  • You won’t see any data from restricted categories anywhere in the system

How to Manage Category Access

If you’re an admin, you can control access to categories:

  1. Click on a category name
  2. Go to “Manage Access”
  3. Choose which users should have access
  4. Save your changes

Good to know:

  • Only admins can change who has access to categories
  • You’ll need to set access for each category individually
  • Users can’t tell if there are categories they don’t have access to