Budgets
Silkline's Budgets feature helps organizations track procurement spending against allocated budget amounts. Assign purchase order and request items to budgets, monitor firm and unfirm spend in real-time, and ensure budget owners review purchases through automatic approval routing.
Creating a Budget
To create a new budget:
Navigate to Budgets from the main navigation
Click Create Budget
Fill in the budget details:
Name — A unique identifier for the budget
Description — Optional details about the budget's purpose
Amount — The total budget allocation
Currency — The currency for the budget (can differ from order currencies)
Include Taxes — Whether budget tracking includes or excludes taxes
Owners — One or more users responsible for this budget
Reviewing Budget Spend
Each budget tracks spending across two categories:
Firm Spend
Committed spending from orders in OPEN or CLOSED state
Unfirm Spend
Planned spending from orders in DRAFT, REVIEW, or APPROVED state
The budget detail page displays a visual progress bar showing how much of the budget has been consumed:
Utilization Colors
Green — Under budget (utilization < 85%)
Yellow — Approaching budget (utilization ≥ 85% and < 100%)
Red — Over budget (utilization ≥ 100%)
Silkline displays warnings when budgets are over-allocated but does not prevent orders from being placed against over-budget budgets.
Adding Budget to Line Items
Budget assignments happen at the line item level on purchase orders and requests:
When creating or editing a purchase order or request, locate the Budget column in the line items table
Click the dropdown for the line item you want to assign
Select the appropriate budget from the list
The item's cost is immediately reflected in the budget's spend calculations. When requests are converted to orders, budget assignments carry over automatically.
Best Practice: Assign budgets at the request stage to ensure consistent tracking throughout the procurement lifecycle.
Budgets in Approval Workflow
When order items are assigned to budgets, the budget owners are automatically included in the approval workflow:
Budget owners appear as Budget Approvers in the approval chain
Budget information and utilization is displayed in the approval guide
If a budget owner already appears elsewhere in the approval chain, they are not duplicated
For more information about how approvals work, see Approvals.
Viewing All Budgets
The Budgets page displays all budgets with key metrics:
Name
Budget name and description
Budget
Total allocated amount
Spent
Combined firm and unfirm spending
Remaining
Budget amount minus total spend
Utilization
Visual progress bar showing percentage used
Owners
Users responsible for the budget
Status
Active or Archived
Click on any budget to view its detail page, which includes:
Spend Summary — Budget amount, owners, and progress visualization
Order Items Tab — All purchase order line items assigned to this budget
Request Items Tab — All request items assigned to this budget
Multi-Currency Support
Budgets support multi-currency operations:
A budget can be in one currency (e.g., USD) while orders are in different currencies (e.g., EUR, GBP)
Silkline automatically converts order item costs to the budget's currency using current exchange rates
Spending is tracked in the budget's currency for accurate utilization reporting
Common Use Cases
Project Budgets
Track spending for specific projects or programs:
Department Budgets
Set up budgets for each department or cost center:
Program Budgets
Track spending across multiple projects within a program:
Enabling Budgets
Budgets must be enabled for your organization before the feature is available. See Budgets Settings for detailed configuration options including:
Enabling/disabling the feature
Creating and managing budgets
Archiving and deleting budgets
Permission requirements
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