3010 · Departments and budgets
Departments
Departments in Autessa Accounting are how spend is owned. A department has an owner, a short code, its cards, a monthly budget and a guardrail policy, and its page shows this month’s spending against budget by category, its month-end pace, its cards and recent spending.
The problem
Spend nobody owns is spend nobody manages
If every charge lands in one company-wide pile, the first time a team learns it overspent is the board meeting. Giving each team a department with an owner, cards and a budget makes spend visible to the person who can do something about it, while it is happening.
What you get
- Each department has a name, a code used on exports and reports, an optional owner named on alerts, and a description.
- Every card belongs to a department, so its charges count against that department’s budget.
- The department page shows spent so far, remaining and the month-end pace at the current rate.
- Budget vs. spent by category, with the same green, amber and red as Budgets.
- Cards in the department and its recent spend, one click from each transaction.
- Getting started suggests departments from your cards’ nicknames and holders.
- Deactivate a department instead of deleting it; Show inactive brings it back into view.
How it works
How does departments work in Autessa Accounting?
Create the department
Give it a name, a code, an owner and a warning line. The code cannot be changed later because exports use it.
Assign cards
Each card gets a department, and optionally a project and default category.
Set its budget and guardrail
Set a monthly budget and choose what happens at 100%: notify, tighten card limits or freeze cards.
Watch it live
The department page and Home show it as near budget past the warning line and over budget at 100%.
Every option
Department fields
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name and code | The code is a short key for exports and reports; fixed once created. |
| Owner | The person accountable for the department’s spend, named on alerts. |
| Warn at | The share of budget where the department shows as near budget (default 80%). |
| At 100% of budget | Notify only, tighten card limits, or freeze cards. |
| Active | Inactive departments are hidden but keep their history. |
Permissions
Who can do what?
| Role | Can |
|---|---|
| Controller and Admin | Create and edit departments, budgets and guardrails. |
| Bookkeeper and Accountant | View departments and their spend. |
| Department owner | Is named on near-budget and over-budget alerts. |
Connected
How it connects to the rest of Accounting
ACCOUNTING FEATURE
Department budgets
The monthly number and its category breakdown.
ACCOUNTING FEATURE
Budget guardrails
What happens to the department’s cards when it runs over.
ACCOUNTING FEATURE
Budget vs actual
The ledger-basis report by department.
AUTESSA PRODUCT
Autessa Homebase
The people platform where your teams and owners are managed.
FAQ
Questions about departments
What is a department in Autessa Accounting?
A team that owns spend. It has an owner, cards, a monthly budget and a guardrail policy, and every card charge is counted against its budget.
What does month-end pace mean?
Where the department will finish the month if it keeps spending at its current rate, so you can act before it goes over.
Can I delete a department?
Departments are deactivated rather than deleted, so their history and reports stay intact.
100% customizable, code and all
Make Autessa Accounting fully your own.
Use it out of the box, then change anything. Ask Autobot, Autessa’s AI builder, for a new field, screen, report, workflow or agent and it builds it into your copy of the app. Or open the code and edit it yourself. Nothing is locked: the app, its data and its code are yours.
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