Budget Adjustments and Budget Changes - Bypass Cost Guards

Applicable Packages This article applies to the Kahua for K-12 Education, Kahua for Owners, Kahua for General Contractors, and Kahua for Subcontractors packages. If you are not sure if this is relevant to you, please contact your domain administrator.

The Bypass Cost Guards feature allows authorized users to temporarily bypass cost (overcommitment) guards on Budget Adjustments or Budget Changes. This is primarily used when transferring budget between activity codes that are already fully committed, where normal guard enforcement would otherwise prevent valid adjustments.

Important things to know about the Bypass Cost Guards feature include the following:

Bypass Cost Guards is intended for controlled, intentional use and applies to the entire budget adjustment or budget change document.
The Bypass Cost Guards check box is available on Budget Adjustments and Budget Changes.
This option allows budget to be moved even when commitments are fully consumed.
Cost guards remain enforced for all other documents.
By default, domain administrators have the ability to select Bypass Cost Guards on the appropriate documents. Permissions can be granted to other groups by adding the Allow Bypassing Cost Guards role for Funding Budget Adjustments and Funding Changes apps to those groups. For more information, refer to Managing Permissions.

Important The Budget Adjustment / Budget Change should not be approved until the related commitment (typically a change order) has been created and is ready for the review and approval process.

You can prepare the Budget Adjustment / Budget Change and the related commitment as a draft at the same time. When you are ready to complete the adjustment, you can then approve the Budget Adjustment / Change and immediately approve the related commitment item.

By managing the items in this sequence, you avoid having other document actions unexpectedly trigger the guard or inadvertently consume the space in the budget created by the Budget Adjustment / Budget Change.

When to use Bypass Cost Guards

This feature is used when:

Activity codes are fully committed, leaving 0 available amount.
Funds need to be transferred between activity codes (for example, moving allowance into authorized work).
Both budget and commitment changes are required, but guards prevent either action from being completed independently.
Without the bypass, the reallocation would cause the available amount of one activity code to go negative temporarily.

How it works

Bypass Cost Guards is a document-level setting.
When enabled, cost guards are skipped entirely for that budget document.
The setting is evaluated on Save and on any status change (for example, submit or approve).
The bypass applies to all items on the document.

Other validations continue to run as normal.

Important Bypass Cost Guards allows you to put activity codes into a state where they have a negative Available amount even when cost guards are enabled for the project.

Note If you leave activity codes in this state, you will receive cost guard errors while trying to perform other actions on any document that references that activity code.

The bypass feature is designed to be used as an exception allowing you to adjust budgets and commitments at the same time. Your project should only be in the exceptional state for a short period.

How to . . .

Enable Bypass Cost Guards on a budget adjustment or budget change

With the Bypass Cost Guards option enabled, you can approve a budget adjustment or budget change without being blocked by cost guards.

When creating or editing a budget adjustment or budget change document, the Bypass Cost Guards option is available in the Details section if:

You are an administrator, or your group has been granted the permission Allow Bypassing Cost Guards.
Cost guards are enabled on the project.
The Bypass Cost Guards field has been enabled in Configuration > Fields.

To enable the bypass option, complete the following steps:

Review the header to ensure that you are in the correct project or partition.
Navigate to the Budget Adjustments or Budget Changes app.
Create a new record or open an existing record and select Edit.
In the Details section, enable Bypass Cost Guards.
Complete the budget adjustment or budget change as needed and select Save or Save / Close.
Submit and approve the document per your workflow.

Use Bypass Cost Guards with a contract change order

Note You must create and save the contract change (or other document) that would be blocked by the cost guard before approving the budget adjustment or budget change.

To use the bypass feature on a budget adjustment or budget change with a contract change order (or similar document), complete the following steps:

Prepare the expense contract change order (or other document) with the desired changes and select Save. The document should be in the projected or pending status.
Create or edit a budget adjustment or budget change document.
In the Details section, enable Bypass Cost Guards.
Complete the budget adjustment or budget change as normal, including any changes that would reduce the Available amount below 0.
Select Save / Close.
Approve the budget adjustment or budget change.
Verify the transfer has occurred by reviewing the available amounts on the Work Breakdown Structure.
Return to the contract change order and set it to Approved (or another desired status per your workflow).