Beacon Finance: Navigation Overview

This article provides an overview of each tab available in the Beacon Finance navigation bar and the reports or features you can find within them.

Navigation tabs (left to right): Accounts / Funds / Balance / Actuals / Transactions / Planning / Admin

Tip: As you navigate between screens, your selected account stays constant unless you change it. You can navigate the account hierarchy at any time by clicking an account name within any report.

Accounts

The Accounts tab takes you to the home account structure screen, which displays summary-level data for all accounts in your view.

  • Ad-Hoc View — Filter to a custom set of accounts.

Balance

The Balance tab contains Balance of Accounts custom IC reports and straight-line reports.

Pending

The Pending tab provides several screens detailing upcoming transactions.

  • Pending Purchases — A subset of POTs/AMBIS data highlighting requests that have been approved by an AO or PI (IC dependent).
  • Pending Requests — A subset of POTs/AMBIS data highlighting requests that have not yet been approved by an AO or PI (IC dependent).
  • Manual Orders — POT/AMBIS transactions with an order number that appear in both POTs and Vision transactions.
  • Open Commitments — Transactions that have been committed but not yet obligated.
  • Near Real-Time (Unposted Transactions) — All transactions processed by NBS during the current day that have not yet been officially posted to Vision.

Actuals

The Actuals tab contains a variety of summary and detail reports.

  • PS/OO Details — Reports employee-level PS projected costs from HR alongside summarized OO transaction data.
  • FYxx OC Details — A summary-level transaction report for current year-funded transactions only, grouped by month and OC code.
  • FYxx Category Details — A summary-level transaction report for current year-funded transactions only, grouped by month and category groups (IC dependent).
  • CAN by Funding FY — Summarizes obligations and commitments processed in a fiscal year, broken down by the transaction's funding FY.
  • CSA Rollup — Central Services Assessments (also known as Managed Funds) report. Obligations are summed and grouped by assessment number, mechanism code, and the IC charged.
  • Mechanism Summary — A summary of obligations by mechanism code for a specific account.
  • Vendor Summary — A summary of obligations by vendor code for a specific account.

Transactions

The Transactions tab is where you can find specific transaction-level details.

  • Today (entire view) — Loads the transaction screen filtered to transactions downloaded this morning.
  • This Week (entire view) — Loads the transaction screen filtered to transactions downloaded this week.
  • Transactions — Opens the transactions page with no filters, for the last account you viewed across any report.
  • CSA Details — Transaction-level details for Central Services Assessments.
  • Expired Funds — Loads the transaction screen filtered to show only expired-funded transactions.
  • Search — Opens a search modal to look up a specific transaction.

Multi-Year

The Multi-Year tab contains transactions and summary reports spanning multiple fiscal years.

  • Five-Year Roll-Up — A summary report detailing the end-of-year obligation total for each CAN in your view.
  • Conditional Gifts — Allows users to enter collections for Gift Funds and report on the multi-year task balance.
  • CRADAs — Allows users to enter collections for CRADAs and report on the multi-year task balance.
  • Unconditional Gifts (UCG) — Allows users to enter collections for unconditional gifts and report on the multi-year task balance.
  • UDO — Groups obligations by vendor and highlights obligations that are undisbursed.
  • Transaction Search — Opens a search modal to find a specific transaction across multiple fiscal years.

Planning

The Planning tab contains tools for entering allocations, budgets, and projections, as well as reviewing PS projections and setting alerts.

  • Allocations by Category — Enter allocations by category group at the CAN level with roll-up visibility.
  • Allocation Rollup — View all accounts in your view and edit allocations by a single category.
  • Budgets — Enter budgets at the summary account level for distribution downward. Can be entered as Other Objects or Personal Services and by fiscal year.
  • Projections — Enter user-defined projected upcoming costs that can be added to various reports.
  • PS Projections — Contains sensitive employee details; some data may be redacted depending on your view rights. Projected values are imported from Beacon HR data.
  • Alerts — Set custom alerts so that Beacon sends you an email when a predefined event occurs.