You can keep your budgets on track by preventing users from adding time once a service reaches its defined limit.

This limitation setting blocks new time entries the moment the estimated hours or budget is fully used, helping you stay in control and avoid negative margins.

📌 This feature differs from the Guaranteed Maximum Price option, which only caps the billable amount for a Time & Materials service. Guaranteed Maximum Price doesn’t stop users from tracking additional time, meaning your budget can still go into the negative. Using the budget overrun limitations, on the other hand, actively blocks users from tracking time once the service limit is reached.

Budget overrun limitations are available on the Professional and Ultimate subscription plans.

How It Works

When users try to track time on a service that has a limitation set, Productive checks the current Worked hours, Quantity, or Budget used value depending on the selected limitation.

If the new time entry would exceed the limit, time tracking is blocked and the user sees one of the following messages:

If the limit would be exceeded:
“You can’t track this amount of time on this service because it would exceed the limit. There are [X] hours remaining on the service. Contact [Budget owner] for more info.”
If the limit is already exceeded:
“You can’t track time on this service because the service limit has been exceeded. Contact [Budget owner] for more info.”

The budget owner receives an automatic email or in-app notification: “[User name] tried to track X hours on [service] which would exceed the budgeted hours.”

📌 Once the total Estimate, Quantity, or Budget total is reached, time tracking on that service is no longer allowed.

How to Enable

Open your Budget and click Edit Budget.
In the Service Editor, make sure the Limitations field is visible.
From the Limitations dropdown, choose one of the available options.

More About Each Option

1) Estimate limit

Blocks time tracking when the total worked hours on the service reach the estimated hours.

Applies to Time and Materials and Fixed services.

2) Quantity limit

Blocks time tracking when total worked hours reach the service quantity defined in the budget.

Applies to Time and Materials and Fixed services.
Once the limit is reached, users cannot add more time entries.

3) Budget cap

Allows users to track over the limit, but prevents approvers from approving time entries or expenses that exceed the budget total.

Applies to Time and Materials and Fixed (piece) services.
Users can enter time, but any entries beyond the budget are blocked from approval, and the approver sees the message:
“This entry cannot be approved because it exceeds the budgeted total for this service. Contact the budget owner for guidance.”
Ensures that actual billing does not exceed the budget, even if tracking was done over the limit.

Related Features and Behaviors

Timer

When the timer reaches the limit mid-session, a warning appears:
“Entry shortened due to budget limit. Please contact your budget owner for more information.”
The time entry is shortened to the remaining allowed hours.

Submit Time Entry for Approval

The prevent budget overrun limitation works seamlessly with time entry submissions feature. Since it checks the total Worked hours in real time, users will see a warning immediately if they try to submit or log time that exceeds the limit. The timesheet will not include any entries that surpass the defined cap.