Configure Focus for financial data
Before your team can start tracking costs, benefits, and budgets in Focus, an administrator needs to configure a few foundational settings. These steps define your fiscal year, currency, and the categories your organization uses to classify financial data.
Complete these steps before anyone creates cost or benefit items. Several item fields validate against the options you configure here, and creation will fail if the required options don't exist.
Before you begin
You need App admin access in Focus. If you don't see Focus admin settings in the top right menu, contact your site administrator.
Know which month your organization's fiscal year starts. Check with your finance team if you're unsure.
Decide on the cost and benefit categories your organization wants to track. Talk to finance or your PMO before creating them, as they appear on every cost or benefit item your team creates.
Configure your fiscal year
The fiscal year setting determines how months are grouped into reporting periods across all focus areas on your site. Charts, the time period picker, and monthly data tables all follow this setting.
Select the Settings icon in the top right corner and select Focus admin settings.
Select Fiscal year and intervals.
In the Fiscal year section, select Edit.
Select the month your organization's fiscal year starts from the Your fiscal year starts on dropdown.
Select Save.
Choose the display currency
The currency setting determines how monetary values display across all focus areas on your site. This is a site-wide setting. One currency per site.
Select the Settings icon in the top right corner and select Focus admin settings.
Select Currency.
Select the currency your organization uses from the Type dropdown menu.
Focus supports a wide range of currencies, not just USD. All focus areas display financial data in the same currency.
Changing the currency changes the display label only. It does not convert existing values. If you switch from USD to EUR, a value of 1000 stays 1000.
Define investment categories
Investment categories are strategic tags that classify why money is being spent. They help executives understand the balance between different types of investment. For example, how much is going toward maintaining current operations versus building new capabilities.
Investment categories are fully customizable. You define the names and descriptions that match your organization's language.
Select the Settings icon in the top right corner and select Focus admin settings.
Select Investment categories.
Select Create to add a new category.
Enter a name that reflects your investment strategy (for example, "Run the Business," "Change the Business," or "Innovation").
Repeat for each category your organization uses.
These categories appear as options when users create or categorize cost items on the Funds tab.
You can rename existing categories at any time. You can only delete a category if it's not currently assigned to any cost items.
Set up cost sub-types
Each cost item in Focus has a cost type: either Labor or Non-labor. These two types are built in and cannot be changed.
Within each cost type, you can create sub-types that provide a more specific classification. Sub-types are fully customizable. You define the names that match how your organization categorizes costs.
Select the Settings icon in the top right corner and select Focus admin settings.
Select Cost and benefit types.
Select the Cost tab.
Under Labor costs or Non-labor costs, select + Create.
Enter a name for the sub-type. Common examples:
Under Labor costs: "Contractors," "Consultants," "Professional services"
Under Non-labor costs: "Cloud Infrastructure," "Enterprise AI," "Workspace & IT Assets"
Repeat for each sub-type your organization tracks.
These sub-types appear as options when users create or categorize cost items on the Funds tab.
You can rename existing sub-types at any time. You can only delete a sub-type if it's not currently assigned to any cost items.
Cost items also have an expenditure class field: either CapEx (capital expenditure) or OpEx (operating expenditure). Like cost types, expenditure classes are built in and cannot be customized.
Set up benefit types
Benefit types classify the kind of value your organization expects to gain from an initiative. Unlike cost items (which have fixed types and custom subtypes), benefit items use a single classification level, benefit types, which are fully customizable.
Select the Settings icon in the top right corner and select Focus admin settings.
Select Cost and benefit types.
Select the Benefit tab.
Select + Create.
Enter a name for the benefit type. Common examples: "Revenue increase," "Cost reduction," "Cost avoidance," "Productivity gain," "Risk reduction."
Repeat for each benefit type your organization tracks.
These types appear as options when users create benefit items on the Funds tab.
You can rename existing benefit types at any time. You can only delete a benefit type if it's not currently assigned to any benefit items.
Summary: what's fixed vs. what you customize
Field | Fixed or custom | Where it appears |
|---|---|---|
Cost type: Labor or Non-labor | Fixed | Cost items |
Cost sub-type | Custom | Cost items |
Expenditure class: CapEx or OpEx | Fixed | Cost items |
Investment category | Custom | Cost items |
Benefit type | Custom | Benefit items |
Currency | Site-wide setting | All financial data |
Fiscal year start | Site-wide setting | Charts, time periods, reports |
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