An approved budget can check spending as it happens. When someone saves a purchase order, bill, expense or journal — and again when a draft is issued or published — every approved budget in force on the document's date that budgets the same expense account (company-wide, or for the department or project the line is tagged to) compares:
spending already posted + open purchase orders and requisitions + this document
with its budget. The document itself, and the orders a bill is raised from, are never counted twice.
Set it with the Spending control button on the budget (it reads, say, Warn · to date); it can be changed on a draft or an approved budget.
- When a document would go over budget
- Track only — nothing is checked; spending still shows on the overview and in Budget vs Actual.
- Warn — the person saving sees a This goes over budget dialog with the budget, the figures and how far over it goes, and can Save anyway or Go back.
- Stop — the document is refused. People with the Override budgets permission (Settings → Roles → Budgets) see Override and save instead; everyone else is asked to lower the amount or find someone who can override.
- Compare with — This period (the budget for the document's own month or quarter), To date (every period up to and including it) or Whole budget.
- Check purchase requisitions too — requisitions are checked only when this is on (they have no department, so only company-wide budgets see them).
Every document saved over budget is listed under Saved over budget on the budget's Budget vs Actual page — when, which document, the account, whether the budget warned or stopped, the amount and how far over it went.
Alerts. When spending plus commitments on a budget line reaches 80% and then 100% of the line's budget for the whole budget, the budget's owner gets a notification (bell and email), once for each. Turn them off under your notification preferences (Budget alerts).
Spending created automatically — recurring bills, bank-feed categorisation, and documents Fusion AI creates on your behalf — is tracked against budgets but not stopped or warned about at the moment it is created.