Managing

After Sheila has completed her planning, the management phase begins: Sheila starts executing on her activities and manages the according investments.

As a first point of reference, the expected spends are entered in the Forecast columns. Sheila starts with the amounts she entered in the Plan columns during the planning phase. Sheila performs this transfer either manually or by an import, see Forecasting. The amount is automatically tagged with the Forecast status.

After Forecasting, quotations are obtained. These amounts are usually maintained in a third-party system and imported into the PO columns. By comparing the Forecast and PO cells of a line item, Sheila recognizes whether she needs to allocate more budget to the line item or can allocate the excess budget to another line item. For more details on POs, see Managing POs. How reallocate budget is described in Reallocating Funds.

As soon as Sheila has placed the order, she assigns the status Committed to the amount in the Forecast cell. This means that Sheila's company is now contractually obligated to pay the amount, but the money has not yet been spent. At this point, the amounts in the Forecast and PO cells should be identical.

Once the money is to be paid, Sheila can enter the paid amount in the Actuals column, either manually or by an import. After creating the actuals Sheila sets the status of the Forecast cell to Occurred. For more information see Managing Actuals.

To do this effectively, she needs to be able to set her workspace appropriately (see Setting up the Workspace).

When managing marketing investments, data from external systems is usually required, for example from accounting software. To avoid time-consuming manual transfers, Sheila can import this data (see Importing).