Harvard University — Harvard Kennedy School
University Budget System

Challenges

Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) was looking for a centralized, position control budget system to support a web-based submission and approval process that communicated with the University’s data warehouse. HKS evaluated several off-the-shelf budget systems, but were unable to find one that satisfied their needs. Then HKS learned about MIT’s custom budget system built by D. Lawton Associates and decided to create a custom budget system.

Key Features

• Budget individual accounts or entire departmental budget groups based on prior year values.
  
• Create multiple versions of budgets and different scenarios.
  
• Import of operating budgets and budget upload to data warehouse.
  
• Special budgeting for faculty members and aggregation of budget groups for combined reporting and analysis.
  
• Download budget data into Excel for customized analysis.
  

Results for HKS

• Less time to prepare and aggregate budgets.
  
• All budget updates are immediately reflected to the entire department.
  
• Easy to integrate budget data from the data warehouse.
  
• Fewer errors due to standardized calculations for all budget groups.
  
• User administration enables controlled access to budget groups and salaries.
  
• Customized reports show budget vs. actuals by date, or department.