Commitment Auto-Materialisation & Budget-Line Report

Dutch verplichtingenadministratie (BBV / Comptabiliteitswet) requires that budget is consumed when the organisation becomes legally bound — a purchase order is approved, a contract is signed — not when the invoice later arrives. This guide covers the two additions that close that loop: automatic commitment creation from approvals, and a per-budget-line committed-vs-realised report.

Goal

By the end of this guide you will understand when a Verplichting is created automatically, what happens when budget is insufficient, and how to read the committed-vs-realised report for a budget line.

Prerequisites

• A Nextcloud account with Shillinq installed and enabled.
• The bookkeeping-verplichtingenadministratie capability configured for your administration (Mandates and Budgets set up under Commitments).

Section 1 — Automatic commitment creation

When a purchase order reaches Goedgekeurd (approved), or a contract reaches Active, shillinq automatically raises a matching Verplichting (commitment) — you no longer need to open one by hand. The commitment carries a Source reference back to the originating purchase order or contract, and one budget line (Verplichtingsregel) per budget coding combination (programme + cost centre + fiscal year + GL account).

• Multi-year orders. When a purchase order's lines are dated across several fiscal years, one budget line is created per year, each reserving budget independently.
• Repeated approvals. Re-approving the same order never creates a duplicate commitment — the source reference is the idempotency key.
• Insufficient budget. If there is not enough free budget room and no override-mandate applies, the purchase-order approval itself is denied with the existing "insufficient budget" message — the commitment is never created unfunded.
• Override-mandate. When an override-mandate holder (e.g. the CFO) covers the amount, the commitment is created anyway, the override reason is recorded on the commitment (Override reason field), and it is also raised as an afwijking (deviation) visible to the rechtmatigheid (legitimacy) reporting for that fiscal year.
• No sufficient mandate. When no mandate at all covers the amount, the commitment is created in In goedkeuring (pending approval) status, exactly as if it had been raised manually.

Section 2 — Committed vs. realised per budget line

Navigate to Commitments → Committed vs. realised. The table shows, for every budget coding combination, four columns:

Column	Meaning
Authorized	The authorised budget for this line (from the matching Budget record).
Committed	Outstanding committed amount across open commitments on this line.
Realised	Amount already invoiced against this line.
Available	Authorized − Committed − Realised.

Click a row to drill down into the underlying commitments contributing to that budget line. This extends the existing per-programme BBV columns to per-line granularity, so a controller can immediately see which budget line is over-committed, not just which programme.

Troubleshooting

• A purchase-order approval fails with an "insufficient budget" error. This is expected fail-closed behaviour — either request an override-mandate, or reduce the order amount / wait for budget room to free up.
• No rows appear in the committed-vs-realised report. No commitments have been raised yet for this administration — approve a purchase order or activate a contract first.