Moving money between budget lines

This page is for budget holders. It explains why you cannot simply edit a
budget that is in force, and what to do instead.

A budget in force cannot be edited

Once a version is effective, its lines are fixed. There is no screen that
changes one, and that is not an oversight.

Somebody was approved to spend a particular set of numbers. Editing them
afterwards would move that approval onto numbers nobody agreed to, and
the record would show only the new ones.

There are two ways to change it

• A transfer. Move capacity between two lines of the version in force. Faster, and it carries its own approval.
• An amendment. A successor version of the whole budget. It goes through propose, approve and activate again.

Use a transfer to move money. Use an amendment when the shape of the
budget changes.

What a transfer refuses

A transfer out of a line is refused when the line does not still have
that much available today, counting what is already reserved or
committed against it.

A line can look like it has money and not have it. What is reserved for a
request somebody raised last week is not yours to move.

Tolerance, and why crossing it is not a refusal

Many funders allow a line to drift by a percentage before they have to be
asked. That figure is recorded on the line, and the answer is worked out
when the transfer is proposed rather than after.

If the transfer crosses it, the transfer is not blocked. What changes is
that approving it needs the reference to the funder or board approval
that permits it. Crossing tolerance triggers a conversation; it never
reallocates on its own.

A transfer is approved by somebody else

Whoever proposed it cannot approve it. Approving it applies it in the
same act, because a transfer that is approved and not applied is capacity
nobody can spend and nobody can see is missing.

An amendment does not throw the old version away

The superseded version stays readable for ever. A reservation held under
it can still explain itself years later, which is the whole point of
versioning a budget rather than editing one.