Velora Budgeting is the new budgeting experience for Aplos. It opens in its own tab and lets you build your organization's annual budget, publish it to Aplos, and track how you're doing against it month by month. This article answers the most common questions about how Budgeting works.

Coming from the old Aplos budgeting screen? See Switching from Aplos Budgeting to Velora Budgeting for what's changed and what stays the same.

Getting Started

How do I open Velora Budgeting?

Select the "Budgeting" link in Aplos. Velora Budgeting opens in a new browser tab, starting on the "Overview" page.

What happens to my existing Aplos budgets?

Your existing Aplos budgets and actuals come over automatically. Once you have Velora Budgeting, the old budgeting page in Aplos becomes view-only. You can still see your past budgets there, but you'll create and edit budgets in Velora Budgeting.

Creating and Editing Budgets

How do I create a budget?

Select "Create Budget." Creating a budget takes two steps:

Step 1: Budget Details

Enter a "Budget Name" and choose the "Fiscal Year to Plan."

Step 2: Starting Point

Choose how you'd like to start:

• Copy a Published Budget: start from one of your current published budgets. The original stays unchanged.
• Copy Actuals from One Year: start from a prior year's actual results. You'll see how many months of actuals are available for that year.
• Blank Workbook: start from scratch.

Then select "Create FY20XX Draft" (for example, "Create FY2027 Draft"). Your new budget opens as a draft in the Budget Builder.

Where do I find all my budgets?

The "Budgets" page lists every budget in your organization, grouped by fiscal year. Each year shows its published budget, working drafts, and earlier published versions. Open any budget to view or edit it.

What does a budget cover?

A budget covers your whole organization. You plan an amount for each account for each month of the fiscal year, and the Budget Builder shows full-year totals and your net surplus.

How do I enter and edit amounts?

Click a month cell to enter or change an amount. You can also move around the grid with your keyboard:

• Arrow keys move between month cells.
• Command + Arrow (Mac) or Ctrl + Arrow (Windows) jumps to the first or last cell in a row or column.
• Tab moves through each cell and its controls.

What can I do from a row's menu?

Each account row has a "⋮" (three dots) button to the left of the account name. Click it to open the row menu with quick actions for that line.

• Add Line Comment: start a comment on the whole account line.
• Spread Evenly: sets every month in the row to the same amount, based on the row's annual total. For example, a row with an annual total of $8,773 becomes $731.08 in each month, and the annual total stays $8,773.

• Copy Last Year: fills the row with the prior fiscal year's amounts (the menu shows which year, for example FY2025).
• Same Shape as Last Year: keeps the row's annual total but follows last year's month-to-month pattern.
• Set Annual Total…: enter one annual amount for the row. This replaces all 12 monthly values, and the dialog previews the result (for example, $9,000 becomes $750.00 in each fiscal period). Select "Set Annual Total" to apply it. You can still adjust any month afterward.

• Clear: clears the row's amounts.

If an account has no actuals for the prior year, "Copy Last Year" and "Same Shape as Last Year" are grayed out with a note such as "No FY2025 actuals."

Changes from the row menu work like any other edit. Select "Save" to keep them.

How do I save my work?

Use the "Save" button in the draft header at the top right of the Budget Builder. It's active whenever you have unsaved changes. If you try to start a new budget with unsaved changes, Budgeting asks you to save first so your work isn't lost.

Can I leave comments on a budget?

Yes! You can comment on a whole account line or on a single month cell, reply to comments, and resolve them when you're done. Lines and cells with comments are marked in the grid. The Comments panel has "Open," "All," and "Resolved" tabs. Unresolved comments also appear on the "Overview" page so you can find open discussions quickly.

Publishing and Versions

What's the difference between Draft, Published, and Superseded?

• Draft: a budget you're still working on. You can edit it and have more than one draft at a time.
• Published: your organization's approved budget for that fiscal year. Published budgets are read-only.
• Superseded: a budget that was published earlier and has since been replaced by a newer published version. It stays available for reference.

What happens when I publish?

Save your draft first, then select "Publish" (next to "Save" in the draft header) and confirm. Publishing makes the budget your approved budget for that fiscal year, sends it to Aplos as your organization's budget for that year, and makes it read-only. If you already had a published budget for that year, the new one replaces it and the earlier one becomes Superseded.

How do I change a budget after it's published?

Open the published budget, open the "Budget Actions" menu, and select "Amend." This creates a new editable draft from your published budget. Your published budget stays in place until you publish the new draft.

What else can I do with a draft?

A draft's "Budget Actions" menu has "Duplicate," "Copy Budget ID," "Export," and "Delete Draft."

Can I go back to an earlier version?

Yes. You can view past versions of a budget at any time. To use an earlier version again, create a draft from it and publish that draft.

Can I export a budget?

Yes. Open the "Budget Actions" menu and choose "Download Excel (.xlsx)" or "Download PDF (.pdf)." Exports follow the same row order as the Budget Builder and show whether the budget is a Draft, Published, or Superseded.

How does Mission Assistant help?

Mission Assistant is built into Budgeting. Open it with the pink button at the bottom right of the screen. You can ask it questions about your budgets and your actual results, such as how you're tracking against plan. When you hover over a cell in the grid, an "Ask why" icon appears so you can ask about that amount. Mission Assistant reads your budget and actuals to answer, but it can't change your budget. Only you can edit, publish, or amend.

Budget vs. Actual

Where do I see how we're doing against the budget?

The "Overview" page compares your published budget with your actual results from Aplos. It shows:

• Year-to-date cards for Net, Revenue, and Expenses, comparing plan to actual.
• A Plan vs. Actual chart for Net, Revenue, and Expenses across the fiscal year.
• What's Moving the Gap, which breaks down the difference between your planned and actual net results. It shows a Total Revenue row plus the expense accounts with the largest differences from plan.
• Unplanned Activity, flagged when you have actuals for accounts or periods with no planned amount.
• Budgets in Progress, which lists your drafts that haven't been published yet.

The Overview notes the month your actuals run through.

Which budget does the Overview use?

By default, the Overview uses your published budget for the current fiscal year. To switch, use the "Viewing FY…" selector at the top of the Overview and pick from the "Choose Reporting Budget" dropdown. Only published budgets are listed. If the current year has no published budget, the Overview lets you know rather than showing an older one.

Why doesn't the Overview show a comparison yet?

Comparisons start after the first month of the fiscal year ends. Until then, the Overview shows your planned amounts for the full year.

Can I still use the Aplos Budget to Actual report?

Yes. Budget to Actual reporting continues to run through the Aplos Budget to Actual report. When you publish a budget in Velora Budgeting, it becomes your organization's budget for that fiscal year in Aplos.

Permissions and Access

Who can create, publish, and amend budgets?

Anyone with permission to edit budgets in your organization can create, edit, publish, and amend budgets. Publishing isn't limited to administrators, and there's no separate second-person approval step.

Items To Consider

• Velora Budgeting is available to Core plan organizations only, and only for your primary Aplos organization.
• Budgets are organization-level only. You can't budget by fund or tag yet.
• Published budgets are read-only. Use "Amend" to make changes. Drafts can be deleted with "Delete Draft"; published budgets can't.
• When creating a budget, you can copy actuals from one prior year at a time.
• Mission Assistant answers questions but can't edit, publish, or amend budgets.
• The old Aplos budgeting page is view-only once you have Velora Budgeting.

We'd love to hear what's working and what isn't! Reach out to our Customer Care team with any feedback or questions.