In Productive, client visibility on budgets depends on the pricing plan and the permissions granted to them.
Essential Plan
Clients on the Essential plan can only view projects and tasks (Client Collaborator). They cannot access budget details or time entry specifics.
Ultimate and Professional Plans
Clients on the Ultimate and Professional plans can view budgets and time entry details if granted the necessary permissions (Client Lead).
Client Collaborator and Client Lead are the permission names used in organizations created from mid-August 2026 onward (previously Client Staff and Client Manager).
👉 See Why Your Permission Set List May Look Different for the full breakdown.
Granting Access to Budgets
To share budget details with a client, two settings must be adjusted:
Check Permission Set
Navigate to the client’s profile and select "Edit Permissions."
Grant them the Client Lead permission, which allows clients to view budgets shared with them.
Give Budget Access
Go to the Client access section in the budget sidebar.
Enable the Client can view this budget option, which allows clients to see the budget’s details, including time and budget usage.
📌 Note: This only works for budgets that belong to the same company as the client.
What Clients Can See
When viewing budgets, clients can access the following (clients can only view three tabs within the budget: Services, Time, and Expenses):
Services
Clients see a list of services, along with information such as billable time, quantity, price, budget total, budget used, and budget remaining.
Time Entries
Clients can see billable time entries but not worked time. They also see the associated task or note but not the cost of the time entry.
Expenses
Clients see a list of expenses with the respective billable amounts but cannot open individual expense details.
What Clients Cannot See
Profit, Margin, Invoicing, Billable time, and Rate
These are not visible to clients. They only see the total budgeted amount, used and remaining amounts, and total time spent.
Comparison of the Visibility of Budget Details (click to expand)
Comparison of the Visibility of Budget Details (click to expand)
Services
This is how you see your services and budget details:
This is what the client sees (+ no budget sidebar):
Time entries
This is how you see time entries:
This is what the client can see:
The obvious difference is that your view has two time columns, Worked time and Billable time.
📌 Worked time is the actual time logged against the services in a budget. The same time entry can have a different worked and billable amount, depending on whether you want to charge more or less.
📌 The client can only see the Time field, which corresponds to Billable time. They can also see the Task/Note attached to the entry, but not the cost of the time entry.
Expenses
This is how you see expenses:
This is what the client can see:
