Sometimes when a Learning Request is made, the requirements (or cost) of the content may suddenly change. This means you need a quick way to inform your Budget's Owner that you'd like to use more money.
Using the Request Top-up feature, will allow you to make amendments to your request, given it falls within one of the three main statuses, from the Budgets & Requests tab on your Profile page...
Pending
When you make your first/original request, and it remains in a Pending state, you can edit all fields of the request's Top-up.
This is then updated, with the Request Made column keeping the original date, as it is locked-in, based on when the first request was made.
To see the Remaining Balance, you can click View, and this shows the current balance left, at the time of approval.
Approved
For the Requester
You can add Supporting Docs (Documents), if you had forgotten this step, they weren't available at the time you made the request, or are now required by the Budget Owner or your Manager, as part of the request.
You can Top-up your request, once the original has been approved by the Budget Owner.
Reasons for requesting a Top-up vary, but one example may be if the content item's price has increased, prior to the actual purchase being made**.
**It's important to remember; a Learning Budget isn't an actual monetary depository for your organisation; no real funds are connected to HowNow, but rather, it's a system used to track spending, as part of your org's learning initiative.
All your Top-up requests will be shown by a tag next to the request name.
You can have multiple Top-ups for the same request, but you cannot request a Top-up from another Top-up. Instead, all Top-ups must be made from the original request. For example:
A £30 Learning Request is made for a Book
It is Approved
You realise the book is actually £50 in total
So, you request a Top-up for £20 (to reach the actual total)
You then see the book's price just went up to £80
This next Top-up request (for £30), will appear as a separate Top-up on the page
Note✨: If you had previously been assigned to a Budget, so now no longer have access to it - but you attempt to make a Top-up request for content you previously had access to - you will receive a Request failed notification.
Inform your Manager, who will be able to ensure you have a new Budget assigned.
For the Budget Owner
Once a Top-up request has come through, a notification will be sent as always. Clicking on it, will take you to the Requests page, with the Information pop-up automatically opening.
The Previously Approved Cost will appear on the Top-up request information pop-up. This enables the Budget Owner to keep a record of how much money has been attributed to the same content. For example:
The original Workshop request was approved for £50
The Workshop price is now advertised as having increased to a total of £100
The User then mistakenly requests a Top-up for £150
As the Budget Owner, this Previously Approved Cost section helps to remind of what's already been approved, so you can now reject that latest request, inform the User, so they can amend it.
If a Top-up request contains an amount higher than what the User has left in their remaining balance, then the Budget Owner will receive a pop-up - after they attempt to approve it - reminding them to increase the assigned Group's Budget.
Remember: you can create a Budget for an individual by adding them to their own Group .
Budget Owners will be able to review the History for an individual Learning Request. On the Results page, click the 3-dot menu and select View History.
A slide-out screen will appear showcasing the following information - by date - and any changes done to these:
Learning Name
Learning Type
Budget Name
Budget Amount
Budget Assignees or Owner
Learning Request amount submitted by User
Note✨: There are a few points to keep in mind here...
If the Budget Owner is deactivated from your organisation's work space, any requests pending, will go to the Workspace Owner, who will be prompted to add a new Budget Owner to the Budget, from which the requests come from.
If a User is deleted/deactivated from your organisation's work space, or is removed from a Budget - by way of the Group being deleted - all their pending requests will be automatically rejected. The same will occur if the Budget is deleted. The name of the person who removed the User/Group or deleted the Budget, will appear within the Request History.
If Reactivated, the User will need to be manually re-added to the Budget (as has always been expected).
The Premium Learning content type doesn't have a Top-up option, as it already exists as a set price, created by your organisation's own Author(s).
Rejected
If an original Learning Request is rejected, the requester can still edit the fields, and re-send the request, via Create New Request.
For example:
Request learning for conference
You make the actual purchase through whichever means has been agreed between yourself and your Budget Owner
You confirm the purchase with your Budget Owner (perhaps uploading a receipt as a Supporting Doc
Your organisation can now account for the money spent, when reviewing their financial accounts.
Remember❗ : As a Budget Owner it's important to remember that editing the amount, represents the total amount you want all Users to have, for that Budget. It's not a top-up of the budget, but rather the new total that still takes into account, any balance previously spent.
For example:
Marketing Budget is £50
User A spends their entire balance (now has £0 remaining)
Your organisation now allows for an additional £200 towards the Budget (so £250 for all Users assigned)
So, the Budget Owner updates the Marketing Budget, from £50 to £250 (the original £50, plus the additional £200, to get the new total)
User A now has a Remaining Balance of £200
Their remaining balance is £200 because, the User had already spent £50 of the absolute Budget.
The Budget Owner must put the amount that they want the total budget to be, not by how much they're topping up.
If the User requesting the learning, hasn't spent their entire balance, and still has some remaining, at the time the Budget Owner has edited the amount, then the following will show for the User:
Sales Budget is £500
User B spends £100 (has £400 remaining)
Budget Owner edits the amount, from £500 to £1000 (an addition of £500)
User B now has £900 remaining (the difference has been added)
Note ✨: When exporting from the Requests page, you will see a column title Top-Up. This is only visible within the export itself, and will show either FALSE or TRUE, to indicate whether the request was indeed a Top-up or not (an original request).
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