The budgets feature is aimed at giving finance teams and budget owners real time budget impact and visibility in Spendesk, enabling informed decisions for spend and preventing going over budget accidentally.

Budgets 2.0 enables flexible control, suitable for yearly financial budgets, or smaller project-based budgets.

Feature availability

Budgets 2.0 is the upgraded budgeting experience. It provides the core tools needed to create, manage, and monitor budgets directly in Spendesk.

Advanced Budgets includes all Budgets 2.0 capabilities, plus advanced dimensions, flexible budget ownership, sub-budget viewer access, and AI-powered budget configuration.

Included in Budgets 2.0

In-app budget creation and editing
Budget criteria setup, including name, period, and granularity
Cost centre and expense category dimensions
Multi-level sub-budgets using these dimensions
Budget overview with used and committed spend
Real-time budget tracking
Budget impact visible when reviewing requests
View-only budget access for cost centre owners and co-owners

Included in Advanced Budgets

Advanced Budgets includes everything in Budgets 2.0, plus:

Supplier as a budget dimension
Custom analytical fields as budget dimensions, such as project, client, or region
The ability to assign a dedicated Budget Owner to any company member, independently of the cost centre structure
Full edit permissions for assigned Budget Owners
Sub-budget Viewer role
AI-powered budget configuration, allowing customers to upload an existing budget spreadsheet and automatically create the budget structure in Spendesk

Terminology

Here are some specific terms used by our budget feature:

Committed spend: any spend generated from a request that has not yet left the wallet, such as an approved expense claim that has not yet been reimbursed.
Used spend: any spend that has already left the wallet, such as a reimbursed expense claim or a card payment.

Configuration

To configure a budget, go to the Budgets page and select Create new budget. There are three steps to creating a budget.

Step 1: Setting up the criteria

This step involves setting the basic criteria for the budget:

Name: a description for the budget.
Period: the start and end date the budget covers, such as a financial year.
Granularity: whether the budget forecast is set as a single amount for the period or broken down by month.
Budget management: Admins, Controllers, and Account Owners can manage and edit budgets.
Budget Owners: with Advanced Budgets, dedicated Budget Owners can be assigned to any company member, independently of the cost centre structure.
Cost centre owners and co-owners: have view-only access to the relevant budgets.
Sub-budget Viewers: available with Advanced Budgets, allowing additional users to track specific sub-budgets without receiving full editing permissions.

Step 2: Defining the structure

You can define the budget structure in two ways:

Manual creation using the in-app UI
AI budget file upload, available as part of the Advanced Budgets capabilities

Your budget structure can use multiple dimensions, values, and sub-budget layers.

The available dimensions are:

Cost centre: included in Budgets 2.0
Expense category: included in Budgets 2.0
Supplier: available with Advanced Budgets
Custom analytical field: available with Advanced Budgets. Custom analytical fields can be used to track spend according to the way your business operates, for example by project, client, region, or another internal classification.

When creating your structure, you may see two special options: All other and future and Unassigned. These options ensure that spend continues to be captured when values are missing or added later.

All other and future

The All other and future option groups together:

Values that already exist but are not explicitly assigned to another sub-budget
Values that may be created in the future, after the budget is set up

Example: If you create a budget by cost centre and a new cost centre is added later, it will automatically be grouped under All other and future cost centres, unless you assign it to a specific sub-budget.

This is useful for planning ahead and making sure future spend is always captured in your budget.

Unassigned

The Unassigned option captures spend from transactions where no value was selected for that dimension.

Example: If you create a budget by expense category and expense categories are optional for employees, some transactions may have no category assigned. Without an Unassigned sub-budget, that spend may not appear in your budget breakdown. Adding an Unassigned sub-budget ensures that all spend without an assigned value is still included.

Step 3: Setting the forecast values

Finally, set the forecast values for each dimension of your budget.

If you selected Overall in Step 1, set a single value for each dimension.
If you selected Monthly, specify a value for each month within the budget period.
Use Distribute evenly to fill in equal amounts across the months quickly.

Once saved, you will return to the budget overview screen. If the budget period is active, its impact will be reflected immediately.

Usage

Viewing your budget

Budget impact is visible in the following places:

Budget overview screen: the central hub for all your budgets, where you can:
- See the overall health of your budgets at a glance
- Drill down into each budget
- View used and committed spend
- Track available budget in real time
Request review panel: approvers can see the impact of a request on the relevant budget before approving it.

Impact on the budget

All spend impacts any relevant budget based on the metadata attached to it, including expense claims, invoices, and card payments.

Budget impact is calculated based on the date of the expense, which in most cases falls within a single budget period.

For certain spend types, such as invoices, you can define a specific invoice period to spread the impact across multiple months or budget periods. In this case, the total amount is divided evenly across each month within the defined period.

Example

Invoice amount: €12,000
Invoice period: 01/01/2025 to 31/12/2025
Budget periods:
- 24/25: 01/04/2024 to 31/03/2025
- 25/26: 01/04/2025 to 31/03/2026
Budget granularity: Monthly

The invoice is spread evenly across 12 months at €1,000 per month. Of those 12 months, three fall within the 24/25 budget period, January, February, and March 2025, and nine fall within the 25/26 budget period, April to December 2025.

Access & Permissions

Budget visibility

Role	Can see budgets?	Which budgets?
Account Owner	✅	All budgets in the company
Admin	✅	All budgets in the company
Controller	✅	All budgets in the company
Budget Owner (any role)	✅	Only budgets they are assigned to as owners
Cost Center Owner / Viewer	✅	Only the budget lines (& sub-lines) impacting their cost center if the option has been ticked (not default)
Sub-budget Viewer	✅	Only budget lines (& sub-lines) they are assigned to as viewers
Requester (not a budget owner)	❌

Budget editing

Role	Can edit budgets?	Which budgets?
Account Owner	✅	All budgets
Admin	✅	All budgets
Controller	✅	All budgets
Budget Owner (any role)	✅	Only budgets they own
Cost Center Owner / Viewer	❌
Sub-budget Viewer	❌
Requester (not a budget owner)	❌

Assigning budget owners

When creating / editing a budget, you can use the owner selector field to search for and select a company member. The members available to you depend on your role:

Role	Can assign anyone as budget owner?	Details
Account Owner / Admin / Controller	✅ Yes — full member list	Can search and add any company member
Cost Center Owner / Viewer	✅ Yes — full member list	Can search and add any company member (because they have full member visibility via cost center access)
Group Admin (team manager)	⚠️ Partial	Can only add members of their managed teams. Already-assigned owners from outside their teams are still visible and can be removed.
Budget Owner (requester, no other role)	⚠️ Partial	Cannot add anyone. Already-assigned owners are still visible and can be removed.

FAQ

Can I make a subscription count toward a budget based only on what is actually paid?

Yes. You can override the committed amount for each subscription card from the subscription details page. If you enable Budget commitment and set the Amount per period to 0, the subscription will no longer contribute a fixed committed amount to the budget. In that case, only the actual paid amount will be reflected in the budget.

What is included in Advanced Budgets?
Advanced Budgets includes everything in Budgets 2.0, plus: supplier and analytical field dimensions (project, client, region, or any custom field), a standalone Budget Owner role, sub-budget viewership, and AI-assisted budget upload.

Who can be assigned as a Budget Owner?
AAny company member can be assigned as a Budget Owner, independent of cost centre structure. Budget Owners get full edit permissions and real-time visibility of their assigned budgets.

What is the difference between a Budget Owner and a sub-budget viewer?
A Budget Owner has full edit permissions and real-time visibility of their assigned budget. A sub-budget viewer has read-only access to a specific sub-budget, giving them the context they need without edit access.

Is my data safe when I use the AI budget upload?
Yes. Your budget data is only used to build your budget structure in Spendesk. It is not used to train AI models and is not shared with other customers. AI can make mistakes - always review key details before confirming.