Bulk Reviewing Budget Requests

**Essential Reading**

For a detailed list of all budget types available on Brightflag, please refer to the following help articles:

• Overview of Budgeting
• Budget Requests - All You Need To Know
• Where do matter budgets appear in Brightflag?
• Estimating a Matter Budget
• Setting & Viewing Financial Budgets
• Interpreting the Results of your Financial Budgets
• Manually Reviewing Budget Requests

What are Budget Requests?

Setting up and keeping budgets up to date is a vital step towards effective cost control and spend forecasting.

Budget Requests are submitted by vendor law firms through the Brightflag Law Firm Portal. From there, the internal matter lead within your company will be notified via email when the budget is submitted by a vendor and ready for review.

When a budget is approved, it will become the new budget for the matter overwriting any previous budgets. 

To View a Budget Request:

• Check that the budget request/review feature is enabled. Navigate to Menu > Matters > Matter Budgets. 
  
  
  
  
• If you don't see this menu option, the feature will need to be enabled. Please Submit a Request to Bright Customer Support or contact your company's dedicated Customer Success Manager.
  
  
• If this menu option (Matter Budgets) is visible to you, click on it.
  
• Here you will see the budget requests submitted to any matter that you have access to.
  
  
• If you are looking for a particular matter, use the filters at the top of your screen.
  
  
• Click on the dropdown arrow under the field Budget Info to see the breakout for that matter.
  
• Important to note that your vendors cannot enter a value for the past quarter/month. All prior approved budget requests will be retained where the time periods don't overlap between requests.
  For any time periods that overlap between the last approved budget and this request, the most recently approved request will overwrite the original budget for those time periods.
  
  
• Until you approve the budget request, the old budget on the matter (or lack of budget) will still apply.

To Approve Budgets:

• Use the tick boxes on the left side of your screen to select the relevant matter budgets.
  
  
• Click Bulk Approve in the top right corner of your screen.
  
  
  
  
• The budgets you have approved will be now be applied to the matter.
  You can edit the matter budget at a later without going through your vendor at any point.

• After Approving or Rejecting a budget, you will have the option to send an email comment to the vendor user who submitted the budget request.

  If you Reject the budget request, it's important that you explain why, so that the vendor can amend the request and resubmit it.

To Reject Budgets:

• Use the tick boxes on the left side of your screen to select the relevant matter budgets.
  
  
• Click Bulk Reject in the top right corner of your screen
  
  
• You must provide a rejection comment when rejecting a matter budget. This lets the vendor know what to change on their revised budget request.
  • The rejection reason will be:
    • Logged on this budget review page  (filter to Rejected budgets).
    • Logged on the budget request page of the Brightflag Law Firm Portal.
    • Sent via email to the vendor user that submitted the budget request.
      
      

• After Approving or Rejecting a budget, you will have the option to send an email comment to the vendor user who submitted the budget request.

  If you Reject the budget request, it's important that you explain why, so that the vendor can amend the request and resubmit it.