Importing budget
If you have prepared your project budget in a spreadsheet, you can import it into Budget. Each row becomes one budget item for an activity, a participant and a cost category. The general rules for files, mapping and error files are described in Importing into EMDESK.
💡 Note:
- You need Manage rights to Budget and at least Read rights to the activities and participants in the file (see Roles and access rights). The latest plan version must be editable.
- Activities, participants and cost categories must already exist. For personnel costs, the participants also need personnel cost rates that are enabled for budget.
Contents
Columns of the file
These columns are required:
| Activity | The project or activity: ID, short name or name, e.g. Task 1.1 or WP 3. |
| Participant | ID, short name or name, e.g. P1, AUR or Aurelian University. |
| Cost Category | The name of a cost category of your workspace, e.g. Personnel, Travel or Equipment. |
| Amount | The costs in the currency of the workspace, e.g. 4500. For personnel costs you can enter the effort instead and set the Unit, e.g. 6 with unit PM. |
| Personnel Cost Rate Name | Personnel costs: the name of a personnel cost rate of this participant, e.g. Senior researcher. The rate must be enabled for budget and valid for the period of the item. All other cost categories: leave empty. This column must be in the file; it cannot be replaced by a default value. |
These columns are optional:
| Unit | Personnel costs only: PM (person-months), PD (person-days) or PH (person-hours) if the amount is an effort. EMDESK then calculates the costs from the personnel cost rate. If empty, the amount is taken as costs and EMDESK calculates the effort. Leave empty for all other cost categories. |
| Start month / End month | The period of the item within the activity, as project month, e.g. M02 and M12. If empty, the item covers the whole duration of the activity. |
| Description | The description of the item. |
| Tags | Tags, separated by commas, e.g. year1,hardware. |
Tip: The Sample spreadsheet in the import dialog contains all these columns with example rows from your workspace, including your participants and cost categories.
Importing
- Open Budget, click the arrow next to Add Budget at the top right and select Import.
- If your workspace contains several projects, choose the project and click Next.
- Click Select or drop file and choose your file.
- Check the mapping: columns with matching headers are mapped automatically (green). Map other columns with the dropdown on the right; columns without a property are not imported.
- Click Import now. If a required column is missing, click Next first and enter a default value for it, e.g. the same cost category for all rows.
When the import is finished, the Budget table shows only the items you just imported, with the message Import completed. Remove the filter to see all items again; later you can find the import with the Imported on filter. If some rows could not be imported, EMDESK downloads an error file with the wrong values marked red; see Result and error file.
Read further how to import activities and events, participants, personnel cost rates and expenses.