Importing a budget made in MS Excel

Logframer can import budgets from a single worksheet. This means that you can't import a whole multi-year budget. You can however import the Totals page of your budget and then (after clearing up) click on the Multi-year budget button in the Budget Lay-out toolbar. Then you can add the items of each budget year manually below the common headers.

Before you start importing a budget made in Microsoft Excel, there are some preparations to be made:

  • Make sure that there are absolutely no merged cells (rows, columns) in the budget table. If there are any, split these cells. If any merged cells remain in the table, the import process will come to an abrupt stop and you will get an error message.
  • Logframer re-numbers every item that is imported. If your MS Excel budget has any numbering, make sure the numbers are in a separate column. If the number of an item is in the same cell as the text, you'll have to remove it either in the Excel version or after importing the table in the Logframer version.

To import a budget from a MS Excel document:

  • In the File toolbar, go to the Import-Export section and click on the drop-down button with the MS Excel logo. Select the second option from the drop-down list: Import an existing budget.
  • You will see the Import dialogue, which has a four-step wizard to guide you through the whole process.
    • Step 1: click on the Open file icon to select the MS Excel document that contains your budget. When you selected the document in the File dialogue, click the Next step button
    • Step 2: your Excel workbook will probably contain more than one worksheet. Select the right worksheet from the drop-down list. On the bottom of the window you will see the contents of the worksheet you selected. When you've found the right one, click on the Next step button.
    • Step 3: Use the drop-down lists to select the columns that contain:
      • The description of the items (text)
      • The duration (optional): if you have a column with the number of months that staff will work for the project for instance
      • Number (optional): if you have a column that indicates how many of each item you need.
      • Unit cost column (mandatory)
      • Total cost column
    • Step 4: Enter the number of the row where the budget starts and ends. If the first row is a title row it's best to skip it otherwise Logframer will import it as a budget item.
  • Press the Import button to start the process

Step 1: select the Excel workbook that contains the budget

Import budget from Excel - step 1

Step 2: select the worksheet that contains the budget

Import budget from Excel - step 2

Step 3: indicate which columns contain the description, duration, number, unit cost and total cost of each item

Import budget from Excel - step 3

You are not obliged to fill out any column except the description and total cost columns.

Step 4: indicate the rows that actually contain the budget

Import budget from Excel - step 4

When the process is finished, you will probably need to clean up the budget, because no distinction is made between budget items and budget headers. So you need to level down the items that belong to a certain budget header.

Please refer to the articles about moving and managing different levels of budget items to finalise your budget.

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