Create an Expense Group

When you have a series of related expenses, it can be helpful to group them together into an expense group

Expense groups enable you to reserve funds from your budget for a series of related expenses. They should not be used for individual expenses (e.g. a one-time bill) or for a single, recurring, fixed expense (e.g. a fixed retainer for a single vendor). Example use cases where expense groups make a lot of sense include: travel, technology subscription fees (e.g. SFDC, Marketo... Plannuh 🤓✊), and printing and copying.

Unlike campaigns - which look like expense groups - expense groups don't have measurable performance and therefore do not typically have metrics associated with them. Expense groups can be embedded into campaigns or they can exist standalone. An example of an expense group in a campaign might be for outsourced creative services in support of an event.

Creating an expense group

There are several ways to create a new expense group. Below are the ways to do so:

Create menu on the navigation bar

On the navigation bar click on the Create drop down and select "New Expense Group"

Create button on the Manage Page in Table View

When you are viewing campaigns on the Manage page in Table View, click on the create button and select "Expense Group"

Plus symbol on the Manage Page in Classic View

When you are viewing expense groups on the Manage page in Classic View, click on the small circular button with the plus symbol in it to the far right of the Expense Groups label.

When viewing a Goal

When you are on a Goal detail page, you can add an expense group by clicking on the "Add Exp. Group" link at the top of the expense group section of the screen. This method automatically associates (links) that new expense group with the current goal. In other words, the Goal becomes the expense group parent.

The Expense Group details page

Much like the Campaign detail page, the Expense Group detail page is broken up into two main functional areas. The left side column features expense group information and budgeting fields and the right side features lists relating to the status of the expenses and tasks associated with the expense group.

Essential Expense Group Information

To create an expense group, there are several required pieces of information you will need to fill out, each of which are noted with an asterisk. The following are the details required to create an expense group:

Expense Group Name

Expense group names must be unique and should describe the purpose of the expenses within it. Below are a few examples - in addition to the ones provided earlier - of common expense groups:

• Sponsorships
• Promotional Items
• PR
• Marketing Software
• Miscellaneous Expenses

As you can see with these examples, expense groups can be used to reserve budget for groups of related expenses which don't necessarily produce performance outcomes. Most often, these expenses are related to marketing infrastructure.

Expense Group Type

Expense groups can be categorized using either the default types included in the dropdown list or custom types that you can create yourself. Just scroll to the bottom of the dropdown list and select <Enter Custom Type> and then type the name of your new expense group type.

Segment

A segment is a portion of your marketing plan that has a single owner (with accountability for spend and results). Knowing and assigning the correct segment is critical because you, or your manager, may be responsible for not overspending or underspending your segment budget. Plannuh needs to provide visibility into campaign/expense group activities, planned budget and expenses by segment.

If your expense group is designed to be used across multiple segments, you can define a shared cost rule that will split and attribute expenses by percentage across multiple segments. These shared cost rules will appear at the bottom of the segment list.

Owner

By default, the owner of the expense group will be the person who creates it in their account.  If you are creating expense groups for another team member you can change ownership here (as long as that owner is either an Admin or has Read-Write or Read-Only permissions to the assigned segment).

Optional Expense Group Information

In addition to the information above that is required for you to create an expense group, there are several optional information fields you can utilize to share more information about an expense group.

Parent (Goal or Campaign)

While expense groups are often standalone budget set aside for non-performance related activities, they can also be assigned to campaigns or goals. Assigning one of these as a parent to your expense group allows you to set aside budget for groups of expenses within the parent. For example, if you have a campaign for an upcoming tradeshow and part of that campaigns allocated budget is for any booth setup expenses, you could create an expense group within that campaign to house all of those expenses. When you create a new expense group under a campaign or goal, the parent will automatically be assigned to that expense group.

GL Code

If your expense group corresponds to a singular GL code, you can optionally indicate which GL that is by selecting it from the drop down list. The GLs in this list are based on the set of codes defined by your Plannuh administrator.

PO Number

If you have a purchase order for the expenses in your expense group, you can optionally fill it in in the PO number field. If you have more than one corresponding PO, you can list multiple.

Allocated Budget

An allocation is the allowance, budget or target spend you are assigning to an activity or set of activities to be used for a specific purpose (such as a campaign) during a specific time period.  

It is important to monitor allocations against expenses to make sure you don’t overspend your budget.  In other words, allocations are what you intend to spend (planning) and expenses are what you are actually spending (execution). Therefore allocating budget for your expense group is a significant step in forecasting what you plan to spend on those expenses. expense group allocations can be spread over several months and you may have multiple expenses against a single allocation.

For example, you may be creating an expense group for sponsorships for the whole year. Based on your best estimate, you think your total cost for those sponsorships is $50,000, so you would put that amount under Allocated Budget.  This amount doesn't actually reduce your budget by $50,000.  Only expenses are applied against your budget.

Tags

Tags are a way to classify objects in Plannuh that are not served by other fields.  For example, let's say that some of your budget segments are defined by marketing functions such as product marketing, field marketing, demand generation.  These may all be grouped together in a segment group called Global Marketing. Since Plannuh has only two levels of segmentation in budget definition, you may need a way to find all expense groups related to field marketing in France.  You can create a series of geographic tags (UK, France, Germany, Italy, etc.) that can be applied to, filtered on, and grouped (by field marketing in France, as an example).

Attached Documents(s)

Plannuh allows you to upload file attachments to your expense groups in order to provide better context into the expense group and its underlying expenses. Some examples of such attachments may be purchase orders, invoices, or other contractual documents that provide insight into the related expenses and their purpose. 

These attachments can be downloaded directly from the expense group.

Notes

This field is a free form text field that allows you to provide additional context to your expense group.