Cost Module: Deep Dive
📄 Summary: What You’ll Learn in This Article
This article explains how the Budget module in Marmind helps you plan, allocate, and monitor marketing spend by distinguishing between available budgets and actual or planned costs, providing a structured framework with planning areas, periods, budget groups, and spend types for transparent and efficient budget management.
Important prerequisites for budget planning
Core concepts of the cost module
Best practices and tips for the cost module
🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Who Should Read This?
This article is most useful for:
Marketing Managers & Budget Owners – who need to plan and allocate marketing spend across campaigns, markets, and actions.
Finance & Controlling Teams – who track costs, monitor spend types, and reconcile invoices.
Project and Campaign Managers – who must monitor budget limits and actual expenses for their activities.
Marmind Administrators – who are responsible for setting up planning areas, planning periods, and budget groups.
✔️ Prerequisites: What Should You Know Before Getting Started?
Level: Easy
Access required: None
No prior knowledge is required, but basic understanding of the following areas is beneficial:
Basic navigation in Marmind
General marketing spend concepts
Budget Module: Overview
The Budget module provides a structured way to plan, allocate, and monitor marketing spend across markets, campaigns and individual actions. It distinguishes between the money available to spend (budgets) and the expenses (costs) incurred or planned. The module requires a planning area and periods to be defined before any budgeting can occur.
What to define first
Planning area: a root node that defines where budgeting starts. It sets the base currency and determines whether budgets require approval, whether users can plan on any level or must start at the top, and whether actual costs can be edited.
Planning periods: define your fiscal calendar and granularity. Customers can choose yearly, quarterly, monthly or half‑yearly budgeting depending on their fiscal year start (e.g., some budgets start in April rather than January).
Permissions: Admin rights are needed to create or modify planning areas and periods; normal users can allocate budgets and plan costs.
Budget groups & spend types: these must be defined up front. A spend type classifies a cost (e.g., social media ads, event agency) and must be mapped to a budget group.
For more information about planning a budget, visit the corresponding article here: https://knowledgebase.marmind.com/kb/planning-a-budget
Core Concepts of the Budget Module
1. Budgets vs. Costs
Budgets are like wallets: they represent pots of money allocated to specific budget groups (e.g., “Online Advertising,” “Events,” “PR”). Each group is independent and can have its own amount.
Costs are expenses or planned expenses recorded against those budgets via spend types. They progress through a lifecycle (plan → committed → actual; see below).
2. Planning & Allocation
Top‑down allocation is common: allocate funds at market or category level, then break them down to campaigns and actions. You cannot skip levels; allocations must follow the hierarchy.
Budget groups can be many or few depending on how granular you wish to track spending. Some customers use only a couple, others up to 50.
Budget limits can be set on campaigns or actions as reminders (e.g., “don’t spend more than €250,000 on this campaign”). The limit does not block spending; if you exceed it the number simply turns red, serving as a visual cue.
3. Spend Types & Vendors
Each spend type must be linked to a budget group. For example, a “Facebook Ads” spend type might roll up to the “Online Advertising” budget group.
Vendors are required when a cost moves from planned to committed. The vendor information allows the system to match imported invoices later.
4. Budget & Cost Grid
The budget & cost grid displays months (or quarters) for the current planning period and shows budgets alongside planned and actual costs. It calculates a forecast (the sum of planned and actual expenses) and shows the variance versus the budget.
A cost list provides a flat list of all cost items, including closed or cancelled costs, useful for audits. A forecast view shows only relevant planned and actual costs, excluding closed items.
Cost Lifecycle
Stage | Purpose & Requirements | Key Details |
|---|---|---|
Planned | Record an expected expense (e.g. 50K EUR for event agency) | Costs are classified by spend type; status = Plan |
Committed | Sign a contract and commit to the expense. A vendor must be assigned. | The cost status becomes committed. There is an optional “Goods received”. |
Actual | Log the actual invoice amount (e.g. 49K EUR instead of 50K EUR) | A new actual cost replaces the committed cost; the original planned/committed item is closed. A tolerance of about 3-5% automatically reconciles small differences. |
Best Practices & Tips
Plan top‑down, manage bottom‑up: allocate budgets at high levels but track costs as granularly as necessary to identify potential overspend early.
Use budget limits for guidance: they offer a quick visual cue but do not restrict spending.
Maintain clean spend type mapping: ensure every spend type points to the correct budget group to avoid confusion in reports.
Capture vendors early: vendor data is essential for committing costs and matching imported invoices.
Leverage cost tolerance: small differences between committed and actual costs are automatically reconciled within the tolerance range.