Auto-drafting next year's budget

Auto-draft generates next year's operating budget by rolling forward this year's posted actuals and applying category-specific inflation. The result is a draft Budget you review and approve in the Budgeting tab — every line shows the math behind it.

How to trigger:
• In Accounting → Budgeting, click "Auto-draft FY {year+1}". The draft is created in seconds.
• Or ask Wally — "draft next year's budget", "roll forward FY {year} actuals into a {year+1} plan", "create a budget for next year split by department". Wally calls accounting_draftBudget and produces a confirmation card.

Inflation by category (FRED CPI):
The drafter pulls the latest 12-month change from the Federal Reserve Economic Database and applies category-specific inflation factors:

• **Shelter** (CPI:CUUR0000SAH1) — applied to rent, lease, occupancy lines
• **Energy** (CPI:CUUR0000SA0E) — applied to utilities, fuel, electricity, gas
• **Food** (CPI:CUUR0000SAF1) — applied to grocery, food cost, ingredients
• **Wages** (CPI:CES0500000003) — applied to payroll, salary, contractor lines
• **All-items** (CPI:CUUR0000SA0) — applied to everything else

If the FRED API is unreachable, the drafter falls back to a 3% blended rate so you still get a usable plan. The header shows whether each line used FRED or the fallback.

Provenance shown inline:
Hover any cell with a dotted underline — the tooltip shows "Auto-drafted: prior actual $4,250 · +3.2% Shelter inflation". Edit the cell and your override replaces the auto-drafted number; the dotted underline disappears.

Dimensional drafts:
If your chart of accounts uses GL dimensions (class, department, location), pass the dimension axis to the drafter. The result is split per-dim — e.g. one rent line per location, one wages line per department. The spreadsheet grid shows the aggregate; the dimensional drilldown panel below shows the per-dim breakdown (read-only — edit individual dim lines from the panel itself).

Approval:
Auto-drafts always start in **draft** status. Review every line, override anything questionable, then click Approve to lock the budget. Once approved, line amounts can't be changed — make a new draft or copy from the approved one and adjust.

Re-running:
Re-running auto-draft for the same fiscal year creates a new draft (it never overwrites an approved budget). Old drafts stay around until you delete them.

Why this exists:
The 30-minute manual rollforward is the single most-skipped step in financial planning. Auto-draft turns it into a 5-second action — every org gets a defensible, inflation-adjusted operating plan, with the underlying actuals visible on every line.