Is there a way to budget across boards?

Platform discussions Special workflows & use cases
1

My team has multiple budgets across different boards.
Is there a way to update the ‘master budget’ from the different budgets.
i.e. if the ‘total spend’ changes in budget #1, it updates the budget #1 spend in master budget.
There are multiple owners across the budget boards. Does the master budget board connections need setting up by them individually from the ‘individual budget sheets’.?
thanks

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2

Hi Lisa,

You can create a dashboard to view data from all budget boards. Please reply if you need help setting this.

Oz

3

Hi @LisaB1!

A great way to do this in more of a table formatted fashion would be to either use a dashboard with a table widget or, if you want the format to be customized to you, you can use the mirror columns and have an automation auto connect based on triggers. What you will need is:

  1. Create your Master Budget Board
  2. Make sure all source budget boards have a two-direction connect column to the Master Budget Board.
  3. New Items - Add an automation for When Budget Column Changes or When Refresh Request Status changes, then create and connect a line item on the Master budget.
  4. Matched Existing Items - use the MATCH automation template to find the matching names on the Master Budget board to connect the line items for your total budget as well.
  5. Mirror the columns you want to see in the totals and have the source data be your update as well.

There are many configurations you will have to consider as you set this up but this framework is sustainable and connects your data across the platform.

Let us know if you want tot talk more about it!

Mike B

4

@LisaB1 here is a demo of what this could look like!

5

Thanks for the ideas folks.
Ideally i would only be copying the TOTAL (SUM) from the different team boards though into the master sheet.
I can’t see a way to copy from that specific cell?

ie.
Board 1 (Production costs):
event 1 - listing all expenses + a ‘Sum’ for the total
event 2 - listing all expenses + a ‘sum’ for the total
etc (events being added through the year)

Board 2: (Administration costs)
Has different categories, such as

  • stationery,
  • IT support
  • telephony
    with the cost listed and a category selected

Board 3(Operational costs):
Event 1 - staffing costs + a ‘Sum’ for the total
Event 2 - staffing costs + a ‘Sum’ for the total

MASTER BUDGET:
Pulls in only the ‘total sums’ for each event/category

Event 1: Production total
Event 1: Operations total
event 2: Production total
Event 2: Operations total
Admin - stationery
Admin - IT
Admin - Telephony

So this master sheet would update when the ‘TOTAL’ of each category updates.

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6

Hi @LisaB1

I just came across your post by chance and thought, I’d throw in another possible solution for your use case. Though I did not try to replicate your scenario by myself, but I remember that we did a video tutorial a while back, which involves a quite similar workflow done with our Spreadsheet Gorilla app.

Though it’s an approach that needs a third party app, probably some try and error with the Excel-like formulas, and does involve a manual trigger to update the items in your main board, you might want to give it a try anyway. Just in case you haven’t found a viable solution in the meantime.

Let me know what you think.

– Markus

7

This is exactly what I’ve been after for a long time. As of now, no one has provided a solution.

Please keep me posted if you ever figure this out.

8

Hi Payton

This is a perfect use case our app, Master Data, can help you with. It syncs data from any number of boards (we call them “source boards”) to a Master Board. For example, once an item has been created or updated in one of the source boards, this will be automatically replicated in the Master Board.

Master Data’s automation recipes does all the updating work for you. No need to connect boards with connect columns to copy data from one board to another. Everytime a line item is added or updated, this is directly copied over to the Master Board.

You might wanna check out this blog article we’ve written exactly for this use case! You can install Master Data here and it comes with a free trial of 14 days.

If you need any help with the app, such as installation or use, you can book us for a free 30-min consultation through this link!

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