Funding Activities With Investments

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

Note:

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

Connecting Activities to an Investment

To connect activities to an investment, follow these steps:

  1. Click Investments.

  2. In the investment hierarchy, click Open Panel on the investment that you want to connect activities to.

    Note: You can connect activities to investment categories, sub-categories, or individual line items, but not to placeholders.

  3. In the Details panel for the selected investment, click Activities, then click Connect Activity:

  4. Use the list of activities to find the activity you want to connect to the investment. To connect the activity, click Connect Spend to Activity for that activity's row in the Action column:

  5. The list of activities will close, and the activity you connected will now be displayed in the Activities tab of the investment's Details panel:

    • Click Search to view the details of an activity in Uptempo Plan.

    • Click Unlink to remove an activity from the investment.

    Note: When you connect a single activity to an investment, 100% of the investment funds will be allocated to that activity automatically.

  6. To connect additional activities to the investment, repeat steps 3 and 4.

    As you connect more activities, they will also be added to the Activities tab of the investment's Details panel.

    Note: You can only connect one activity to categories and sub-categories. As a result, the Connect Activity button will no longer appear on the Details > Activities panel for categories and sub-categories after you have connected an activity.

You have successfully connected activities to an investment. In the investments hierarchy, investments that are connected to an activity and have been automatically allocated are marked with the icon, and are highlighted in yellow.

Note 

When you connect additional activities to an investment, the allocation method will be changed from Automatic Allocation to Manual Allocation, and the newly connected activity will be allocated 0% of the investment.

This means that, for every new activity you connect after the first one, the previous allocation will remain in effect until you manually reallocate funds to the new activity.

When you have finished connecting activities to the investment, you can allocate the investment between the connected activities.

Manually Allocate Funds Between Connected Activities

By default, the system will allocate 100% of an investment to the first activity that is connected. If there are multiple activities connected to an investment (or if you want to allocate less than 100% of the investment to a single connected activity) you can manually adjust how the funds are allocated.

To manually adjust the allocation of investment funds between connected activities, follow these steps:

  1. Click Investments.

  2. In the investment hierarchy, click Open Panel on the investment for which you want to adjust the funds allocation.

  3. In the Details panel for the selected investment, click Activities, then click the Open Activity Funding Panel button.

    Note: The Open Activity Funding Panel button is not shown on the Details > Activities panel of any category or sub-category that has a connected activity. This is because categories and sub-categories are not directly associated with any funds (only line items are associated with funds), so adjusting the allocation of funds is not applicable to categories and sub-categories.

    The Activity Funding Panel opens, displaying the details of the investment as well as the connected activities and their current allocations:

    There are also some additional options available in this panel:

    • The Activity Funding Panel will open using the same view that you had selected on the main table in the Investments section of Uptempo Spend. To change the view from within Activity Funding Panel, use the dropdown menu.

    • Click Add activity to add another activity.

    • Click Unlink on an activity to disconnect it from the investment.

    • If only one activity is linked to the investment, click Convert to Manual Allocation to make changes to the allocation.

  4. Double-click a cell in the table to edit the amount inside. Enter the amount you want into the cell, then click anywhere outside of the cell (or press the Enter key) to finish editing.

    Note: The Unallocated row displays the balance of funds which have not yet been allocated to an investment. You can underallocate (allocate less than 100% of the available fund), but the system will not allow you to save if an investment is overallocated (more than 100% of available funds are allocated, indicated by a negative amount in the Unallocated row).

  5. To save your changes and exit the Activity Funding Panel, click Save (or click Close if you want to discard your changes).

You have successfully adjusted the investment allocations between connected activities. In the investments hierarchy, investments that have been manually allocated are marked with the icon (replacing the icon).

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).