Facilitated by the Budget and Financial Operations team, Berkeley’s budget process is a continuous cycle of actions throughout the year that helps the campus, divisions, and departments evaluate their financial position, determine where they wish to go, and chart a path for how to get there.
Annual Budget Process
The annual budget process kicks off with strategic planning in the December-January timeframe. In the Call Letter, leadership provides the general direction of the university and key budget assumptions. Finance Planning & Analysis (FP&A) then provides Detailed Guidelines and Assumptions as well as deliverables that each Division will need to provide and present at the Budget Hearing. After the Budget Hearing, a formal Allocation Letter is provided to outline the decisions made by leadership. The budget process is complete in time for the beginning of the new fiscal year.
After the first and second quarters of the year, divisions and departments update their budgets to address changes that have occurred since the budget was created.
Learning topics
Campus deliverables
Annual Budget Process
The FY2024-25 Budget Process webpage shows the timeline and has information for each budget year, including:
FY2024-25 Budget Call Letter is the document sent from the Provost and Chancellor at the beginning of the budget process to Deans, Vice Chancellors, and Divisional Finance Leaders calling for divisional budget submissions.
FY2024-25 Budget Guidelines and Assumptions provides guidance to divisions including key dates, planning assumptions, contextual information, and links to helpful tools and resources.
FY2024-25 Budget Process Deliverables outlines the deadlines and deliverables for the year. You'll find descriptions and instructions for each of the deliverables, along with the templates to create your submission and sample templates that are completed. Budget deliverables include:
- FY25 Operating Budget in CalPlanning and HCP
- Multi-year Budget template is a high-level summary of the division’s budget plan. It includes actual results from the prior year and projections for the current year and the next two years. Organized as a SRECNA (this stands for Statement of Revenue, Expenses, and Changes in Net Assets), this template serves as the primary means by which the overall financial performance of your division will be examined in relation to your strategies to fund critical priorities and manage other impacts to your budget.
- Use of Reserves template is an itemized list of your planned use of reserves for strategic initiatives (e.g., capital projects, revenue-generating activities, etc.) over the next three years.
- Form A (academic units only): if you are in an academic unit, you will be asked to complete a Form A in which you provide detailed information about your faculty salary, merit, promotions, separations, and new hires. This template is emailed to you directly. This data is uploaded into CalPlan mid budget cycle and is then reflected in your Budget Template.
- Request for Central Resources template is used to make requests from this funding pool. Due to the limited amount of the fund, only the most compelling needs will be considered.
Quarterly Updates
After the first and second quarters of the year, divisions and departments update their budgets to address changes that have occurred since the budget was created; this is usually done via an in-year (re)forecast process. The Budget and Financial Operations team provides the templates, instructions, and support for this process with links to the resources in the DFL Weekly email.
Policies that govern the work
The Call Letter sets the direction for the budget. The overall budget assumptions and guidelines are dependent on the State Allocation as well as decisions made by the UC Regents and UC Office of the President (UCOP).
Roles and responsibilities
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Divisional Financial Leaders submit their budget and templates on behalf of their Dean/VC
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Managers/Supervisors, Budget Owners and Financial Analysts may all play a role in data aggregation and/or data entry
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At the Budget Hearing, usually the Dean or VC presents the budget deliverables
Systems used
CalPlanning: CalPlan and Human Capital Planning (HCP) using either the web or Excel (Smart View) interface.