Working with Budgets

The budgeting features built into FF&EZ make it simple for you to monitor the relation of your proposed FF&E design to the target budget. There are three things which will be tracked:

Budget	This is a number entered once for any given item, after the budget has been finalized. You can enter a budget for areas only, areas and rooms or area, rooms and objects. Entering a budget for objects allows you to compare how your estimate of the cost of each item rolls up against the budgets you've entered for the rooms they are in before any products are selected.
Price	In FF&EZ, actual client prices are calculated based on the FF&E occurrences in each room. This number is equal to the price for each product used in the objects, multiplied times the amount of product used in each object (from the component list on the Object List form) times the quantity of objects in each room (the "Qty" field in the FF&E Worksheet) multiplied times the room count (the "Room Qty" field on the Room Form). For purchasing management, no markup is used, so the price is equal to the cost.
Budget and Price Subtotals	This is a number showing the total budgets from the detail contained in the item in question. For example, if you assign a budget to each room, it is useful to monitor how the sum of the room budgets compare to the target budget for the area in which they occur. In the same manner, you can budget each object, and monitor how close their total budgets meet the target budget for the rooms in which they are placed.

Once entered, these numbers are available for reporting at each level of detail: Project, Area, Room and FF&E occurrence. The FF&E Worksheet has several reports for analyzing and presenting this data: the Budget Summary and Budget Detail reports for budgets at all levels, the Budget / Price Comparison reports for comparing actual prices to target budgets, and the Pricing Summary and Pricing Detail reports for reporting only "actuals." This is an extremely useful feature, which can quickly tell you if your budgets are realistic, and give you a means to pinpoint trouble spots during revisions.

To add budgets, simply fill out the "Budget" field on the area, room and object screens either as you add them or by going back to the appropriate form and editing them — note that you can also enter them directly into the list portion of those screens.

Room Budget Calculator

The Room List screen includes a budget calculator (the [=] button next to the "Budget" field). If you enter a room size, it allows you to calculate a room budget based on a target cost per unit area (e.g., cost per square foot). Once a room area is entered, the system will also display the equivalent unit budget for any budget amount that is entered or calculated.

For prices, you start by entering the catalog cost into the specifications. If you have set them up, any discounts will be taken and markups applied to create a price for the item (of course, purchasing management projects will stop with the net cost). You can override the price suggested by your project markup to lock in a fixed price. The price will then be multiplied by the quantity needed for each object, by the quantity of the objects placed in each room and (for prototype rooms) the number of rooms in the project. The resulting subtotals will appear on the budget-related FF&E Worksheet reports, which you can preview or print at any time.

Using the FF&E Summary

As you use either method, you can use the FF&E Summary on the FF&E Worksheet to see how the total budgets and prices are accumulating—as each new item is added, the totals for the level above will increase. In this way, you can iron out any problems in individual area and room budgets.