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.
This new budget feature, enables flexible control, suitable for yearly financial budgets, or smaller project-based budgets.
Terminology
Here are some specific terms used by our budget feature:
Committed spend - any spend that is generated from a 'request' that hasn't yet left the wallet, for example an approved expense claim that hasn't been reimbursed
Used spend - any spend that has already left the wallet, such as a reimbursed expense claim or card payment
Configuration
To configure a budget, go to the Budgets page and press Create new budget.
There are 3 steps to creating a budget:
Step 1 - Setting up the criteria
This step involves setting the basic criteria for this budget:
Name - a unique description for this budget
Period - the start and end date this budget corresponds to, for example a given financial year
Granularity - whether or not the budget forecast is set a single amount for the period, or broken down by a specific amount per month
Budget Owners (optional) - Assign "Budget Owners" other than Controllers and Admins to manage and control budgets with full edit permissions and real-time tracking. If no members are assigned, only Controllers and Admins can edit the budget, track expenses, and receive notifications.
Cost Center Owner & Co- Owner view only access to track their budgets and Sub- budget usage.
Step 2 - Defining the structure
In this step, you define the structure of your budget, this can be done via:
Manual creation of the structure using the new UI
AI budget file upload - upload your budget spreadsheet and have us pre-fill all the budget configuration
🔒 Your data stays private. Your file is only used to set up your budget and is not shared with other customers or used to train AI models. AI can make mistakes, so please double-check key details before confirming.
The budget structure can be defined flexibly across multiple dimensions, values, and sub-budget layers. The available budget dimensions are:
Cost centre
Expense category
Supplier
Custom analytical field
When creating your structure, you may see two special options: All other and future and Unassigned. These ensure spend is still captured in your budget, even 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 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 per dimension.
If you selected Monthly, specify a value for each month within the budget period. Use the Distribute evenly button to fill in equal amounts across months quickly.
Once saved, you'll be taken back 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 all your budgets at a glance
Drill down into each budget to view spending breakdowns for both committed and used spend
Request impact (coming soon) - Approvers who are budget owners or viewers will see the impact on relevant budgets when reviewing a request, helping inform approval decisions.
Impact on the budget
All spend impacts any relevant budgets based on the metadata attached to it, whether it is an expense claim, an invoice, or a card payment.
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/month. Of those 12 months, 3 fall within the 24/25 budget period (January, February, March 2025) and 9 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.
