Creating a Spreadsheet

The INDEPENDENT user group for users of CODA's DREAM accounting software.

Create Spreadsheet

Press the icon with the green plus, or use File -> New Budget Spreadsheet. You will se this screen:

First select your main option:

To list and upload budgets against all nominals, and hold the budget at nominal level, select 'All Nominals'.
To list and upload budgets against nominals with no ledgers, select 'Nominals without Ledgers'.
To list and upload budgets against nominals with ledgers, but to hold the budget at nominal level, select 'Nominals with Ledgers (budget on nominal)'.
To list and upload budgets against nominals with accounts, select one of the two 'Nominals with ledgers' buttons, depending on what order you want the data displayed in.

The set the options (which will vary according to what you selected above):

Opt to restrict the nominal range to P&L or balance sheet;

Select the budget (transaction type) you wish to update;

Select the year you wish to update;

If posting to nominals with accounts, set the contra nominal (the standard DUMY account on each nominal or a selected nominal - which must not have a ledger attached);

Set any available and applicable options:

only list nominals/accounts where input is allowed;

skip (downloading) zero budgets;

leave the DUMY account out of the listing;

set the number of decimal places you budget to (0,1 or 2);

Opt to include a row for column numbers (very useful in VLOOKUP formulae).

Opt to download actual data as opposed to budget data (useful to get last year's figures into a second spreadsheet in the right format)

Optionally, enter criteria in any of the five filters you wish to apply, noting that all apply separately, and you can use them to include or exclude the criteria.

Press 'Go'

Note that the nominal preselected in the dropdown is the one held against the transaction type (or in Dream 3.3 against the BUDGET_NOM process template. This program works slightly differently from Dream in the case of the process templates for nominals with accounts. If you haven't set anything up Dream will use the source nominal and the DUMY account for the contra posting, but we givce you the choice.

In Excel a sheet will be displayed in which the existing budgets for the selected nominals/accounts will be displayed.

You can populate the spreadsheet any way you like (keying data, linking sheets, using formulae):

	One of our tricks is to have the year's budget in a separate sheet for each nominal or nominal/account and then ink a one-twelfth formula to the first eleven months and then a "total less sum of eleven" in the 12th column. This avoids any rounding errors.
	Another trick we've used is to have a phasing formula (or several, e.g. 'seasons', 'weeks in month', 'working days') and use this to phase the figures from a total to a monthly figure.

Once you have populated the spreadsheet you must save and close it (until we develop the program a bit further). You can save the file as an Excel 97-2003 workbook (xls) or an Excel 2007 workbook (xlsx).