Budgets, Forecasts and Alerts
Set up your financial year and budget categories, plan the budget, track monthly spend, forecast the year end and act on budget alerts
On this page
Budgets are how TurfWise knows what "on track" means — you set an annual amount for each spending category, and every invoice and order is measured against it.
Premium
Budgets, the Budget Planner, forecasting and budget alerts are part of the Premium plan.
How do I set up my first budget year?
Everything starts with your budget year and categories. Click your initial at the right of the top bar, then Settings › Finance & billing › Budgets & financial year. If you have no budget year yet, the Budget page also shows an Open finance settings link that takes you there.
Choose your financial year
If you don't have a budget year yet, the page opens on Set Up Your Financial Year. Pick a Financial Year Format — April – March (UK Tax Year) is recommended, and January – December is there too. You can also choose Custom Dates and set your own start and end dates.
Create the year
TurfWise names the year for you from the dates. It shows what will be created before you confirm: the budget year itself, 27 default Operations categories (aeration, fungicides, fuel and so on) and 5 default Overheads categories (wages, water rates, capital and so on). Click Create Financial Year & Categories to go ahead.
Tidy up the categories
Rename, delete or add categories so they match how your club actually spends. Add Category lets you pick a type — Operations (OPS-), Overheads (OH-) or Custom (CUSTOM-) — and the code prefix is added for you.
Enter the amounts
Set each category's annual budget here, or click Open Budget Planner to do it with more tools. The Total Annual Budget is worked out from your category amounts automatically.
Reset to Defaults wipes your categories
Reset to Defaults deletes every budget category in the selected year and replaces them with the standard set. Only use it on a year you haven't started coding invoices to.
Setting the VAT rate
Your VAT rate is on the Finance Settings page — click the settings button in the Budget page header, or choose Settings › Finance & billing › VAT rate. It's the rate used by the Add VAT tick boxes on invoices and orders. Employer pension and National Insurance assumptions for payroll costs sit on the same page.
How does the Budget Planner work?
Click Money in the top bar, then Budget & forecast › Budget Planner, or the Planner tab on any Budget & forecast page. It's where you set a year's budget line by line, with Operations and Overheads shown as separate groups.
The header card
The green card at the top shows the year's planned total, its status (draft or active) and how it compares with last year. It holds:
- Year chips — switch between budget years. When next year doesn't exist yet, Start FY … budget creates it as a draft, copying every line, its budget and its phasing from the latest year. Nothing changes on the year you copy from.
- Compare with — a drop-down beside the planned total: last year's actual spend, last year's budget, or zero (start from nothing).
- Save, Activate and Export (a CSV of the budget).
Budget lines and staff costs
Two tabs sit under the header card. Budget lines is the line-by-line table. Click into an amount to change it, and select a line to see its Monthly phasing, notes and detail in the side panel.
- Bulk Adjust changes several lines at once — by a percentage, by a fixed amount, or by scaling them to a target total.
- Rebalance — when it's on, raising or lowering one line spreads the difference across the other lines in the same group, so the group total stays the same.
Staff costs plans the year's wages: everyone on the books at their planned pay, plus new posts and seasonal staff, with employer NI and pension worked out for each row. The total is the figure your staff wages line will carry. People who can't see salaries in Staff see the totals only.
Activating the budget
When you're happy, click Activate. From then on, spending is tracked against these amounts on the Budget page, in reports and in alerts. You can still make adjustments later.
Save as you go
Save stores the budget lines and the staff plan together without activating the year, so you can build the budget over a few sittings before it goes live.
Where can I see spending month by month?
Open the Spending tab (or Money › Budget & forecast › Spending). It shows when the money went, and on what, excluding VAT.
- Running total — your spend so far against the year's budget spread evenly. Switch between Operations, Overheads and Everything.
- Month in focus — pick All year or a single month. For a month you'll see Spent this month, Vs monthly plan, and every line's spend for that month, biggest first.
- Line by line — a heat map for each group, one square per month. Click a line to see its detail.
Use the year selector to look at a different budget year, and Export CSV to download the line-by-month grid.
How do I forecast the year end?
The year-end forecast is shown on the Budget page. To look closer or change it, click Adjust the forecast in the green card. This opens Budget Forecast.
At the top you'll see your Total Budget, Known actuals YTD, Projected Year-End, Year-End Variance and how many categories are Over Budget. Categories on course to exceed their budget are listed so you can act early.
Adjusting a forecast by hand
Pick a category on the Monthly Breakdown panel to see its months, laid out with Budget, Actual and Projected rows.
Click a future month
Click any month in the Projected row to type your own forecast for it. Past months are read-only because they come from actual invoices.
Or edit several months at once
Use Set each to for one amount per month, or Spread total of to share an amount across the remaining months, then click Apply.
Undo if you need to
Edited months are highlighted and get a small reset button, which puts that month back to the calculated forecast. Reset all removes every override for the category.
Each category also carries a High, Medium or Low confidence rating, and Export to Excel downloads the forecast.
What are budget alerts?
Budget alerts flag the lines that need a decision, using the same rule as the Budget page. Open them with Alert settings in the Budget page's green card. TurfWise checks every morning, and you can click Check now to check again.
There are three kinds of alert:
- Over budget — spend plus orders has reached the line's budget.
- Spend with no budget — money is going on a line with no budget set.
- Won't last the year — at the forecast rate, the line will pass its budget before year-end.
For each alert you can Snooze 24h, Snooze 7d, or resolve it once you've dealt with it. Filter the list by severity or type to focus on what matters.
You don't have to open Alerts
The same lines are counted on the Budget page under Over budget now, Spend with no budget and Won't last to your year-end month, so you'll see them each time you open Finance.