Funding Activities With Investments

To provide visibility into how your marketing activities are funded, you can create connections between your investment line items in Uptempo Spend, and your marketing activities in Uptempo Plan.

You can connect an investment line item to one or multiple activities. This means that a single investment can be used to fund multiple activities, or that a single activity can be funded from multiple investments. After you create a connection, you can decide how the funds from the investment line item are allocated to the connected activity (or activities).

Connections between investment items and activities are shown in both Uptempo Spend and Uptempo Plan, when you view the details of the connected investment items and activities.

Note:

You can also connect investments and activities from Uptempo Plan. For details, see Create a New Activity: Connecting Activities to Financial Items.

How It Works

Connecting an activity to an investment item consists of two parts: connection and allocation. Connection refers to establishing the link between a specific activity and a specific investment, while allocation refers to funding the activity with some or all of the investment's funds.

Funds can be allocated from an investment to connected activities automatically (Automatic Allocation), or manually (Manual Allocation). When Manual Allocation is used, you can choose how much of the investments funds are allocated to a given connected activity — including no funds. This means that an activity can be connected to an investment, but have no funds allocated to it.

There is also an additional allocation method, called Auto Distribution. This method automatically distributes the funds in a specified Spend column between multiple connected activities based on the distribution proportions of a predefined reference column.

Automatic Allocation vs. Manual Allocation

When you connect one activity to an investment item that has no other activities connected, the system will initially use Automatic Allocation. This means that 100% of the investment's funds are automatically allocated to the single connected activity.

Example 1:

You connect Activity A to Investment Line Item X, which has $10,000 in available funds.

As a result, Activity A is automatically allocated the full $10,000 (100% of available funds).

If you connect more than one activity to an investment, the system switches to Manual Allocation for that investment. When Manual Allocation is active, you can decide exactly how the investment's funds are distributed between the connected activity.

Example 2:

You connect a second activity, Activity B, to Investment Line Item X.

You manually allocate $3,000 to Activity B.

As a result, Activity A is allocated $7,000 (70%) and Activity B is allocated $3,000 (30%), for a total allocation of $10,000 (100% of available funds).

When you're using Manual Allocation, you can allocate less than 100% of the available funds, and leave funds unallocated for later use (or for allocation to other activities that will be connected later).

Example 3:

You reduce the allocation on Activity A to $3,000.

As a result, Activity A is allocated $3,000 (30%) and Activity B is allocated $3,000 (30%), for a total allocation of $6,000 (60% of available funds).

This leaves $4,000 (40%) of the $10,000 total investment funds unallocated and available.

While you can underallocate funds with Manual Allocation, you can't overallocate them: the system will not allow you to allocate more funds than are available in the connected investment.

Example 4: 

You increase the allocation on Activity A to $8,000.

As a result, Activity A is allocated $8,000 (80%) and Activity B is allocated $3,000 (30%), for a total allocation of $11,000 (110% of available funds).

This leaves -$1,000 of available funds unallocated, which means that Investment Line Item X is overallocated. In this situation, the system will not allow you to save the allocations until you have adjusted them back to 100% or lower.

Note

Even if an investment line item is connected to only one activity, you can decide to switch it to Manual Allocation at any time. This is useful if you want to allocate less than 100% of available funds to the connected activity.

Auto Distribution

Although an investment line item with multiple connected activities must use Manual Allocation, you can still automate the allocation of its funds to connected activities in some cases using the Auto Distribution feature.

Auto Distribution automatically allocates the line item amounts set in specified Spend columns to connected activities. It does this by splitting the funds between the connected activities in the same proportions as the allocations that were previously set in a predefined reference column.

The primary use case for Auto Distribution is for columns that represent Committed and Actual spend amounts. During the planning phase, you'll typically enter planned spend amounts into Expected or Forecast columns, then manually allocate those funds between connected activities. When you later fill in the corresponding spend amounts in the Committed or Actual columns, the way the funds are distributed between the connected activities is usually still the same — but the total amount is often different. Rather than having to manually recalculate and enter the allocation amounts, you can use Auto Distribution to perform the calculations and data entry for you, saving you time and effort.

Example

Investment Line Item X is connected to two activities, Activity A and Activity B. On this line item, the amount $10,000 set in the column Q3 Forecast. This amount is allocated to the two connected activities in a 60%/40% split: $6,000 to Activity A, and $4,000 to Activity B.

You set Q3 Forecast as the reference column for Q3 Actual to enable Auto Distribution.

Later, you enter the amount $15,000 in the Q3 Actual column for Line Item X.

Because Q3 Actual is using Auto Distribution, this amount is automatically allocated to the connected activities Activity A and Activity B in the same 60%/40% split as the specified reference column (Q3 Forecast): $9,000 to Activity A, and $6,000 to Activity B.

Additional Information

Here are some additional important details that you should be aware of when connecting activities and investments:

  • You can connect activities to any level of the investment hierarchy: categories, sub-categories, or line items. However, categories and sub-categories are not directly associated with any funds — only the line items within them can be linked to fund amounts. This means that, when you connect a category/sub-category and an activity, it is actually the funds that belong to line items within the category/sub-category that are being used to fund the activity.

  • In the investments hierarchy, line items that are connected to activities (i.e. the line item is part of a category/sub-category which has a connection to an activity) are highlighted and have special icons to help you identify them. For more information, see Categories, Sub-Categories, and Line Items.

  • Even if a line item is already indirectly connected to an activity via its parent category/sub-category, you can still create a direct connection on the line item itself. Open the Details > Activities panel of the line item, then click Connect Activity to directly connect the line item to an activity instead. The activity can either be the same one that is connected to the parent, a child activity of the activity connected to the parent, or another activity entirely.

  • If a line item is indirectly connected to an activity via its parent category/sub-category, and you directly connect it to an activity that is on a different branch of the activity hierarchy, this is called an "out-of-boundary connection". When you make an out-of-boundary connection, it is not possible for both activities to be connected to the line item. To resolve the situation, the system will do the following (after prompting you for confirmation):

    • Remove the existing connection between the parent category/sub-category and the original activity

    • Create the out-of-boundary connection to the new activity on the specified line item

    • Automatically create new connections at the line item level between all other existing line items in the parent category/sub-category and the original activity (to replace the parent-level connection)

    This procedure allows you to create the out-of-boundary connection, while still maintaining all existing connections between all other affected line items and the original activity (by replacing the indirect connections through the parent with direct connections on the line items themselves).

Next Steps