The primary purpose when monitoring expenditure against a budget is to ensure that expenditure does not exceed either the budget, or its planned or received income.
The first problem is how to spot where expenditure has, or will, exceed the budget. The easiest way for institutional administrators to spot budget problems is to regularly review the Financial Summary Report which is run via the Cognos platform. This report gives a summary of all the transaction data in UFS and provides an overview of the current financial position of the School/Institution.
For further information on this report, refer to the Finance Division Training Guidance and FAQs: Cognos GL Financial Summary report. Additionally, there is guidance on common reporting issues.