When we launched Divvy in 2018, we put budgets at the heart of our platform because we knew that staying within budget can make or break your business. We also understood that for a budget to work, everyone in your company has to own it.
Budgets in Divvy do more for your business than a simple card limit will ever do. They help you organize spend across your organization, allowing tight control of who can spend and exactly how much they can spend. The outcomes? Access to company funds where needed, spending without surprises, and greater predictability.
And who doesn’t love predictability? As our own Director of Finance Matt Boardman said, “I want Divvy to make me look awesome. And, with Divvy budgets making our company finances more predictable, the more awesomer I am.”
With this in mind, we are happy to announce that as of today, we are releasing one of many new improvements to budgets within Divvy: Goals and Limits.
How Goals & Limits work together
We updated our existing Goals feature to work with Limits, a new feature that’s now live in the Divvy platform. Together, they give your business the same control of spending, with additional insight into how to make your finances even more predictable in the future.
Goals
A goal is how much you want your team to spend in order to keep your budget on target.
Once you set a goal in Divvy, use the Spend Chart and Snapshot features to track your progress throughout the month. We updated the colors in our Spend Chart to make it easier to see how you’re doing.
- If you’re under budget, you’ll see a green tag showing the amount left to spend.
- If you exceed your goal, you’ll see a yellow tag showing the amount you overspent.
- If you want to get back on track, simply adjust your spending goal or limit.
Limits
A limit is the spend number your team can’t exceed and is only set by admins. Divvy allows budget owners to distribute funds up to—but not over—the budget limit.
If your team exceeds its budget goal, we alert you through your Spend Chart with insights for hitting your goal next month. In the future, you’ll be able to set a budget limit for a percentage or fixed dollar amount above your goal.
How to set new Goals & Limits
Goals on existing budgets will stay the same. If you want to make changes or set new limits, go to Budget Settings and make adjustments. Your budget goal can never exceed your budget limit, and your budget limit can never be less than your budget goal.
Both features are only visible to budget admins and owners.
Making budgets better
We want to make those painful, month-end budget reviews a thing of the past. Instead of hoping your budget owners keep tabs on the spreadsheet you created last year, Divvy gives your finance team and budget owners tools to see budgets in real time—and ways to collaborate on shared goals.
In 2020, you can expect even more improvements to Divvy budgets. Here’s a sneak preview of what’s ahead:
Budget periods
You’ll soon have the ability to go beyond one-time or monthly budgets with daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and yearly budgets. If you need more options, we’re also creating custom budget periods.
Sub budgets
Have you ever wished you could split a budget into smaller budgets? Or create a departmental budget, then let managers build and own it from there? We’re working on sub budgets so you can.
Activity and insight
To create and manage budgets, you need data. As part of your Divvy budgets of the future, you’ll have all the insights you need to understand where your spend is happening and where you need to take immediate action to stay on track. We may even look at the spend numbers ourselves and propose next quarter’s budget for you.
Reach your financial goals
With Divvy Goals and Limits, your teams now have more visibility into how day-to-day spending affects budgets, and how budgets affect your overall financial goals. If you need help getting started with these features, feel free to reach out.
