Cloning Budgets for Next Year

Controller 6 min read Updated July 2026

Next year's budget rarely starts from a blank page — it starts from this year's, adjusted for what you learned. The practical recipe in REDA Financials: create the new year's budget shell, carry the lines over (the CSV import makes this painless), adjust, and post. Fifteen minutes, most of it thinking about the numbers rather than typing them.

Getting there. Open the App Launcher (the grid icon at the top-left of any page) → REDA Financials AI → the Budgets tab, then click New to create next year's shell. Open last year's budget from the tab's list views to copy its lines across.
Access you'll need. Creating and editing budgets and their lines, and posting them, requires the Accounting Admin v2 or Accounting Controller v2 permission set. The Accounts Payable v2, Accounts Receivable v2, and Read Only v2 sets can view budgets but not change them.

The year-end recipe

Create the new budget shell

New Budget: same entity and type, name it for the new year (FY2027 Operating Budget), and — the detail that matters — Start Date 1 Jan 2027 and End Date 31 Dec 2027, because next year's purchases find this budget by their date falling inside that range. Set Fiscal Year = 2027 too as a tidy reporting label, but the dates are what drive the matching.

Carry the lines over

Build your line sheet from this year's budget (its Budget Lines list exports cleanly, or start from the form's Download Template), adjust the amounts in the spreadsheet — this is where the 4% utility increase and the repairs lesson from March get applied — then Choose CSV File to load them. Accounts are matched by name; the import replaces whatever lines the draft had.

Review, approve, post — before January 1

Committed and Actual start at zero (history never copies — it belongs to the old year). Post once approved, so the first January PO already has its ceiling. The old budget needs no ceremony: it simply ends with its date range, and its record — original plan, amendments, outcome — stays intact forever.

Copy-then-adjust beats adjust-in-place — and both beat blank-page. Meridian's controller starts the FY2027 sheet from FY2026's Effective amounts (the amended truth), not the original Budgeted — the amendments were the year's lessons, already priced in. Then she zeroes anything that was one-off. The result: a budget that remembers.

Concretely: after March's $15,000 transfer from Professional Fees to Repairs (see Budget Entries), Meridian's FY2027 worksheet starts from the amended reality, not January's guess:

GL Account	FY2026 Budgeted	FY2026 Effective	FY2027 starting point
Repairs & Maintenance — Buildings	$120,000	$135,000	$135,000 — the repairs lesson, priced in
Professional Legal and Consulting Fees	$30,000	$15,000	$15,000 — last year's overshoot not repeated
Utilities — Buildings	$45,000	$45,000	$46,800 — the 4% tariff increase applied ($45,000 × 1.04)

The remaining lines carry across at their effective amounts until the review says otherwise. Every number in the new sheet is a decision — that's the feature, not the overhead.

What starts fresh — and what never copies

	In the new year's budget
Lines & amounts	Whatever your reviewed sheet says — each new Budgeted Amount is the original allocation of the new year
Committed / Actual	Zero. History belongs to the old year's records and stays there
Approved Increases / Decreases	Zero — last year's amendments were last year's decisions; their lessons live in the numbers you chose
Status / Approval	Draft, unapproved — the new promise earns its own sign-off before posting
Budget Entries	None — the amendment trail never transfers between budgets
Notes	Whatever you write — the ideal place to record "carried at FY26 effective" or "one-off removed"

The old year stays answerable. Nothing about building FY2027 touches FY2026 — its original plan, its amendment trail, and its final Committed/Actual outcome remain on record permanently. Year-over-year comparison comes from keeping the old budget, not from copying anything out of it.

The January overlap, handled

Both budgets can be posted at once — they don't collide, as long as their date ranges don't overlap: each transaction is governed by the budget whose Start–End range covers its own date. December's late POs check against the 2026 budget; January's first PO checks against the 2027 one.
Invoices for last year's POs keep liquidating against last year's budget lines through the PO-line link, even when they arrive in January — the commitment ledger follows the promise, not the calendar.
Retire (void) the old budget only when its last matched invoices have landed — voiding is about preventing new references, not about closing the year.

The dates are the handover switch. Nothing else "activates" the new year: a transaction dated in 2027 looks for a posted budget of its entity whose Start–End range covers that date. Give the new budget 1 Jan – 31 Dec 2027 (and leave the old one at 2026) and the changeover is automatic; get the dates wrong — a gap between the two budgets — and January posts with no ceiling at all. The Fiscal Year label doesn't affect this; the dates do.

Common mistakes to avoid

Mistake	Why it hurts	Do this instead
Copying last year's Budgeted instead of Effective	Every amendment — the year's hard-won lessons — is silently discarded	Export or read the Effective column as your starting sheet
Posting the new budget with the old dates unchanged	Two budgets' date ranges overlap the same period; which one governs a purchase becomes ambiguous	Set new Start/End dates (1 Jan – 31 Dec of the new year) before posting; update the Fiscal Year label to match for tidiness
Waiting until January to post	The first POs of the year post with "No budget line found" — uncontrolled by accident	Approve and post in December, so day one has its ceiling
Voiding the old budget on 1 January	December's POs still have invoices coming — their liquidation needs the old budget's lines	Retire it only after the last matched invoices land
Carrying one-off amounts forward untouched	Last year's lobby renovation funds this year's nothing — free money nobody planned	Zero the one-offs in the sheet; note why in the line's Notes

Where to go next

Creating Budgets & Budget Lines — the mechanics referenced here.
Budget Utilisation Reports — mining this year for next year's numbers.
Closing the Books — the year-end this dovetails with.

Frequently asked questions

The reliable, always-available path is the recipe above — shell plus CSV lines. It also happens to be the better process: the spreadsheet step is where next year's thinking happens, and the import guarantees you reviewed every number you're promising.

That's a policy question ("carry-forward") rather than a system one — REDA Financials doesn't roll balances automatically. If your organization carries forward, add the amount to the new year's line and record the reasoning in the line's Notes.

Set Start/End to your fiscal span — say 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027. Matching works on the actual dates, so every purchase dated inside that span finds the budget no matter which calendar year it falls in. A non-calendar fiscal year needs nothing special; the Fiscal Year field is just a label (write it "2026", "FY26-27", however your team reads it) and does not affect matching.

Never — the amendment trail belongs to the budget it amended and stays there, permanently. What carries forward is their outcome: by starting your sheet from the Effective amounts, the approved changes are already inside the new Budgeted numbers, and the new year begins with a clean trail.

The spreadsheet, yes; the budget, per entity. Each entity gets its own budget in its own home currency, and each line's GL account must be global or belong to that entity. The CSV recipe makes the per-entity copies cheap — the thinking transfers, the record doesn't.

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