Advance to Planning: move your association into the next budget year

Overview

Goal: When your new fiscal year arrives, SmartProperty asks you to confirm which funding plan your board selected, then moves that year into place as your current budget year. The action is called Advance to planning.

Audience: Anyone with write access to the Reserve Studies module.

If you have been hunting for a Finalize button, or you call this step rolling over, calibrating, or aging your study, Advance to planning is the step you want.

Setup

You need write access to the Reserve Studies module. Roles that have it include Account Admin, Property Manager, CFO, and Reserve Analyst. Without that access, the banner does not appear at all. There is no button to look for.

The planning year needs at least one funding plan. Until the planning year has one, the banner does not appear.

The planning year has to have begun. Until the start date of the planning year passes, neither the banner nor the planning step for that year appears.

How-to

Find the banner

Use the fiscal year selector in the top bar to switch to your planning year. The yellow banner appears at the top of the page:

> Advance to planning for [year] budget year  [Advance]

The banner does not appear while you are viewing your current budget year. Switch years first.

The banner is part of the property header. Open a property first, then switch the year.

The banner names the year you will plan for next, not the year you are confirming. If you see "Advance to planning for 2028 budget year," the wizard asks you about 2027.

On the planning year dashboard you will also see the strip of steps under The Steps to Prepare a Capital Reserve Plan. The strip ends with Advance to next planning year.

Hovering that step points you back at the same banner.

Advance, step by step

Select Advance. A wizard opens.

The steps across the top are Select funding plan, Verify plan details, Submit.

Select funding plan. The question on this step is "Which funding plan was selected for [year]?" Each plan appears as a card showing its name, its plan type, and its annual reserve contributions. Note the past tense. The wizard records a decision your board already made. SmartProperty does not pick a plan for you. Choose the plan, then select View plan details.

Verify plan details. The question on this step is "Are these financial details accurate as of [date]?" The panel shows that plan's assumptions, including the starting reserve balance, interest rate, and inflation rate. A targeted plan also shows its target and target year, and a threshold plan its threshold. A ladder plan shows its steps in a table instead of the single contribution figures. If something is wrong, select No, Edit this plan. Doing so opens that plan for editing. Otherwise select Yes, Continue.

Submit. Enter the total assessments for the year, then select Submit plan selection. A confirmation appears. Select Close \& reload property to go back to the property.

To leave without committing to anything, use the link at the bottom left.

On the first two steps, look for "I'm not ready to select a plan for [year]." On the submit step, look for "I'm not ready to setup a plan for [year]."

Leaving does not remove the banner. You can come back later.

The planning copy of your components

Open Components while viewing a planning year. The notice appears:

> These components are a copy for planning purposes. Add, edits, and deletes will not affect your current components until planning is complete and a funding model is adopted.

SmartProperty creates this copy of your component data when a planning year is set up.

Scenario testing belongs in the copy, and the copy is what people are asking about when they ask whether there is a sandbox.

To start the copy over, select the refresh icon in that notice. The Recreate Component Copy dialog warns that recreating the copy will override all of the planning year's components with the data from your current year.

You set an inflation rate for the copy. Components carrying their own custom inflation value keep that value.

Under Show advanced options you can tick "Skip aging and inflation. Copy components exactly as they are," and you can change the source of component information.

If you edit a component in your current year, and the planning copy has a different change to the same field, an Update Conflict dialog asks which value to keep.

Set up the new planning year

The new planning year needs a copy of your data before you can plan in it.

Select that year in the fiscal year selector. The setup flow opens: Review anticipated expenditures, Verify financial details, Complete.

Review anticipated expenditures lists components due for replacement and asks which year each replacement lands in. Two buttons set every row at once, and a checkbox pushes the same changes back to the earlier year.

Verify financial details is where you set the inflation rate your components are aged by, and optionally update the source of component information.

Select Create a copy \& start planning to finish.

Under Show Advanced Options, select Skip setup and start planning to create an exact copy of your components with no aging and no inflation adjustment.

A confirmation dialog appears first.

Choose that option only if your component data is already set up for the new year.

Reference

There is no Finalize step

Nothing in this workflow closes, locks, or freezes a budget year. SmartProperty has no Finalize action.

Advancing records which funding plan was selected. Advancing also moves the property forward, and the arriving year becomes your current budget year.

If someone told you to "finalize" a year, Advance to planning is the step they meant.

What submitting changes

The last step of the wizard states the effect: your financials and components for that year will be updated to match the details of the funding plan you chose.

Specifically:

The plan you chose is marked as adopted. The plan then shows an Adopted funding plan badge.

On the Financials screen, Reserve Balance on [date] and [year] Annual Reserve Contributions are taken from the plan's first year. Interest Rate on Reserve Funds, Component Inflation Rate, and Rate of Annual Reserve Contribution Increases are taken from the plan itself. On a ladder plan the increase rate comes from the first ladder step. The total assessments figure you typed is saved as [year] Annual Assessment Fees.

Your components are updated from that plan's component copy.

The year you confirmed becomes your current budget year, and the year after it opens as your new planning year.

Your reports update to the new figures shortly after you submit. If a report still shows the earlier figures, refresh the page.

What you can still edit

Nothing is locked.

After you advance, you can still edit both your new current budget year and your new planning year, and most things can still be changed from the planning year.

Scenario work belongs in the planning year.

The fiscal year selector holds your current budget year and your planning year. Use the selector to move between them.

When you save on the Financials screen, SmartProperty asks "Do you wish to apply these assumptions to all of your existing [year] plans?" A later correction to your assumptions can flow into your plans for that year.

If you advanced too early

Recreating the component copy is self-service. An advance cannot be undone.

A year can be advanced once.

If you select Advance for a year that has already been advanced, the wizard shows "Uh oh, something went wrong! Please try submitting again." Retrying produces the same message.

Contact SmartProperty. Name the property and the budget year.

Other words for this

Search terms that land here: finalize a fiscal year, close out the year, roll over, roll forward, advance the year, calibrate, age or aging components, open the next year, sandbox, planning copy, adopted plan.