The Senior Leadership Team (SLT) and the Advisory Council on Finance, Personnel, and Development review the college budget each spring and then consider potential revenues and expenses for the following fiscal year.

These groups recommend a budget to the President (generally in February/March) and the budget is presented to the Trustees in April for their review and approval.

View Your Departmental Budget

Operating and/or Compensation

Departmental budgets are comprised of two components; the Operating Budget and the Compensation Budget.

The Compensation budget includes the salary and related benefits of permanent positions, paid with unrestricted college funds, and is created based on HR position records. Positions paid by restricted funds are not part of the college-wide compensation budget. The Operating Budget includes all other departmental expenses, and is created by the Department and submitted for entry into Oracle.

Departmental Operating Budget Spreadsheet Information

The Operating budget includes all expenses except the salary & benefits of permanent positions which are budgeted for as part of the Compensation Budget.

Deadline

Operating budget packages are generally distributed in mid-April, after Trustee approval of the full college budget, with a due date of mid-May. You will receive an email from your vice president and/or budget manager when budget spreadsheets are available. The Controller's Office enters departmental budget information into Banner so that it will be available in Banner and budget reports on July 1.

Changes to Budget Spreadsheet

Each budget spreadsheet feeds into a Divisional Summary spreadsheet. Please complete only the shaded areas of your departmental worksheet and do not make any other changes (i.e. eliminating rows/columns, adding rows/columns, etc.). If you do need to have a change made to your budget worksheet, please contact the Assistant or Associate Controller so that we can make this change for you.

Budget Amounts

Update the amounts in the Proposed Budget column to reflect your departmental budget. The spreadsheet is set up so that the proposed budget is equal to your prior year budget, adjusted (when applicable) for any budget reductions, approved increases and/or one-time items from the prior year, provided we were given the account number(s) to adjust.

If we did not know the specific account to adjust, but we knew which department to add the adjustment to, you will see a line that includes the change to your budget. This amount must be allocated to individual budget line items prior to submission.

If we did not know either the specific account or department to add a budget adjustment to, it was included only on the Divisional Summary. Your budget manager will be able to confirm any adjustments that affect your budget.

You many reallocate funds between line items or add/remove budget lines, but your total budget must not change, unless you have approval from your vice president.

Compensation Items Included in the Operating Budget

As noted above, the Compensation Budget includes the salary & benefits of permanent positions. Any other compensation payments are considered operating expenses and must be included in the operating budget, if applicable. (This does not apply to Auxiliary Budgets as those departments are required to budget for both compensation and operating expenses.)

To view updated cost center, expense, revenue & program codes in Oracle, explore go.davidson.edu/oraclecodes (Davidson login required).

Completion

Once your budget is complete, notify your vice president or supervisor who will review the division as a whole and then notify us when division-wide spreadsheets are complete.

Alert

Oracle Migration & Important Notes for FY24 Budgets

The conversion from Banner Finance to Oracle will result in changes to the general ledger account structure (in Banner, the Fund-Org-Account-Program string), with the most changes occurring in regards to revenue/expense accounts. In Oracle, revenue/expense accounts will capture the "type" of expense that is being incurred (also known as the natural expense). As an example, rather than charging expenses to an account titled "Special Events", the expenses will be captured in accounts describing the activity, such as catering, honoraria, travel, supplies, etc. There will be an enhanced use of program codes (another field in the general ledger string) to capture activity by function, if desired by the department. As a result, the number of accounts in Oracle will be vastly fewer than in Banner.  

The migration from Banner to Oracle will occur in the midst of FY24. To ease in migration, FY24 budget lines should be mapped to Oracle accounts as much as possible. What this means is that the very detailed expense accounts you may be used to seeing in your operating budget may be significantly reduced, and non-natural Banner budgets may need to be allocated to natural accounts. A column has been added to the FY24 budget spreadsheets that refers to the Oracle account we believe is the best option (explore the list of current Oracle accounts). In some cases, this will be a simple one-to-one exercise; other cases will require research to determine how the account has been used in the past and how it can be folded into the new account structure. As you work through the budgets, please contact Lori Gaston, Cathy Richards and Susie Fuller with questions and for assistance. We understand that the process for FY24 will be more interactive that it has been in previous years.