Matching an Invoice to a Budget

You have potentially learned about the concept of "Budgets” already, when we discussed the topic editor screen.

Zingoolarity allows you to optionally associate a budget with any topic.
To do so, you just have to enter something in the budget matrix in the topic editor screen:

(The budget matrix in the Zingoolarity topic editor screen)

As soon as you do so, "totals” will also appear in the different views (contextchart, kanbanboard and roadmap).

But having just a budget is not good enough to manage the outcome.
You also need to associate real spendings with your budgets.

And it is tremendously simple to do so in Zingoolarity:
You just create topics which represent your real spendings.
You can for example add one or more topic types for this (for example "Invoice”).

So whenever you receive an invoice from a supplier, you create a new topic somewhere in your Zingoolarity instance (this is completely flexible; you could create a topic hierarchy to contain invoice topics by month or you can create a container topic inside of each project or product topic to hold the incoming invoice topics it is completely up to you).

So let us assume that the current topic you are editing represents an invoice and you now want to match this invoice to a budget.

You can switch to the matches associated with a topic by clicking the "Matches” button inside of the topic editor screen.
Initially the screen will be empty and will look something like this:

(Zingoolarity topic matches screen)

This screen works a little bit different compared to the other screens you have already encountered in the context of the topic editor.
You will notice that there is no "Add” button.
This is because the screen is actually already a search screen.

You can enter part of the name of a

• Budget
  if you already know the name of the budget to which you want to match the invoice.
• Parent
  which might be a budget category or the name of a project or product.
• Top
  which is the name of a topic above the projects or products.

Here is an example, assuming you received an invoice from your consulting provider "Accenture” and you know that you have planned a dedicated budget for Accenture:

(Zingoolarity topic matches screen while searching for "Accenture” budget)

You now click on the "Add” button next to the budget:

(Zingoolarity match editor screen)

This will create a new match between the invoice topic and the budget topic.

You additionally update the following fields:

• Period
  Select the appropriate budget period from the drop-down box.
  You can learn how to maintain your individual periods by looking at the "Using the Periods Browser” chapter further down in this getting started guide.
• Value
  Enter the value in currency of the invoice to be matched.
  This is usually the full amount stated on the invoice.
  In some cases you want to split the invoice over multiple matches.
  Then you enter just a part of the total invoice value.
• Detail
  You may add an optional explanatory detail to the matching of the invoice.
  Much like the "Detail” of a topic it can manually contain HTML tags (for example a "
  ” tag to force a line break).

Much like in the topic editor screen, you have a selection of buttons to complete your input:

• The "Save” button will just save your match (without leaving the match editor screen).
• The "Save+Back” button will do the same but return to the previous screen.
• The "Cancel” button will just return to the previous screen (without saving).
• The "Delete” button will request confirmation, will delete the match and then will return to the previous screen.
• The "Log” button will show a historical transaction log of the current match (for auditing purposes).

When you return to the previous screen, you will see the match which you just added in the list of the matches:

(Zingoolarity topic matches screen with the matched "Accenture” budget)

And you will also see the "rainbow bar” again, marking the match which you just edited.
This is helpful if there are already many matches for the given topic.
The screen will scroll to the last edited match and will highlight it with the "rainbow bar”.

Editing an existing Match

You will also see the "Edit” button next to each and every match.
Clicking this button will allow you to switch to the match editor screen again to make some modifications.

Sorting of the Matches

In general, the matches are sorted in period order of the matched budget.

Going Back to the Topic

You can click the "Back” button in the upper-left corner to return to the previous screen (in this case, the topic editor screen).