The Human Services Professionals

For a given cost centre X...

Definition: the most recent budget may be (a) a draft that a house supervisor is working on, (b) a budget that a supervisor has submitted but which is not yet approved, or (c) the most recently approved budget.

(SCENARIO A) you have DAS manager access:

(SCENARIO B) you have cluster manager access:

• if there are budget/s queued up waiting to be verified by you, then you are taken to the first budget in the queue.
  
• Otherwise, if there is a budget sitting in the DAS manager's inbox, but not yet approved, you will be invited to visit that (if you say "no", then skip to next dot point below ...)
  
• Otherwise, you are taken to the most recent budget.

(SCENARIO C) you have house access:

• If there is a budget sitting in the cluster manager's inbox, but not yet approved, you will be invited to visit that, for example, in order to resubmit (if you say "no", then you are taken to the most recent budget)
  
• Otherwise, if there is a budget sitting in the DAS manager's inbox, but not yet approved, you will be invited to visit that, for example, in order to resubmit (if you say "no", then you are taken to the most recent budget)
  
• Otherwise, you are taken to the most recent budget.

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT OPTIONS FOR FUTURE PROJECT MEETINGS

Any changes to the business rules that affect workflows should be drawn up as a workflow diagram ("app design") prior to coding. We recommend that the following issues be dealt with via additional business rules. The issues are a matter of agreed process, rather than software functionality.

There are currently no agreed business rules relating to what should happen as a houskeeping budget is being submitted, verified or approved. For example:

• Should the user be forced or invited to cancel any other budgets that have been are in the system for the same cost centre, which may have been created prior or after?

There are currently no business rules relating to what should happen as a CERS officer is altering the client list in a house. For example:

• The CERS officer should, in ordinary circumstances, be blocked from doing this until all budgets in the system, which contain calculations that depend on the client count and even on the names of the clients, are either approved or rejected by line management. 

In cases where there are multiple budgets queued up (see items in PINK above):

• The budget the manager is expecting to pop up is unlikely to be the one that actually pops up.
  
• Rather, it's likely to be a budget that he or she (or someone who was acting in his or her position) neglected to verify or approve some days, weeks, months or even years ago.
  
• If the manager is not alert to the date of the budget, he or she is likely to think "the figures are wrong".
  
• Alternatively (and more likely), the manager will think he or she is approving the "current" budget, rather than the old budget, and will not think to 'go back in' and look for the current budget, and approve that as well.
  
• The consequence of this is that unless a manager never neglects to verify or approve (the majority do 'neglect' from time to time, for multiple reasons, many not their own personal fault, contact EMSOnline.Access@dhs.vic.gov.au for more info) he or she can not be sure which budget he/she is approving.