Budget overview
No matter how you create the budget (by winning a deal, from the projects or the budgets tab), and whether you're building it from scratch, editing an existing one, or creating one from a template, the budget overview remains consistent.
You also have the option to build your budget using the Simple Budget Editor, a simplified version of the Budget editor, which, after saving, leads to the same budget overview.
For easier navigation, you'll notice that the main budget elements include:
Navigation pane: Contains sections for Feed, Services, Time, Expenses, Invoices, Purchase Orders, Scenarios, and Recurring budgets.
Main budget settings: the budget start and end date, sharing options and quick notification settings, and the Budget sidebar which contains general budget information, details, project and email associations, client details, custom fields, and additional budget settings.
Budget editor: Allows setting up services, rates, billing types and units, your time-to-complete estimations, as well as defining time-tracking and booking restrictions (covered in the paragraphs below 👇).
Accessing the Budget editor
The budget editor can be accessed from different starting points:
1) If you've turned off Open Hours and Expenses in the settings (meaning that no services will be added to your budget by default), you'll have to use the Budget editor to add services when creating a budget.
To add services, simply click on "+ Add services" and you'll access the Budget editor.
2) If you've turned on Open Hours and Expenses in the settings, you'll initially see two service line items in your budget called "Open Hours" and "Open Expenses".
These are placeholders that allow time tracking and scheduling even before adding detailed services to your budget.
However, it's recommended to edit these promptly as they lack service types and rates, impacting later profit and resource analysis.
To edit them, select "Edit" in the upper right corner, and you'll access the Budget editor.
3) If you are editing a previously set-up budget, you'll access the Budget editor by clicking the "Edit" button in the upper-right corner.
Budget editor options
Within the Budget editor, you can manually add new service items by clicking "+ New item" or add your services from previously defined rate cards.
You'll notice that each service line item section consists of:
Name | A short freehand description of the service. |
The Service Type | What you offer to a client, as defined in the Settings, as well as your basis for later profit analysis. |
The Billing Type | Time and materials, Fixed, or Non-billable. For more information on the billing types, refer to this article. |
The Billing Unit | Hours, Days or Piece (mainly used for expenses). For more information on the billing units, refer to this article. |
Adjustable tracking options, which include: | Time tracking: click on the clock (🕑) icon to enable or disable it for the service. |
Quantity | The number of hours, days or pieces of your service you are selling. |
Price | The price of the service you offer to a client. |
The Total Budget | Dynamically shows the calculated total budget for the whole budget section, as well as the total budget per service line item. |
For detailed instructions on creating services and incorporating them into your budgets, check out this article.
Additionally, click on the three-dot menu to the right of the service section name to add additional fields like Discount, Markup, Estimate, and service Description.
Pro tip: Internal projects provide a more straightforward budget overview compared to client projects.
Internal budgets reflect the time spent on internal activities (services), the users' cost of work on the services, as well as any additional expenses incurred on that budget.
Any services you add there will be classified as Non-billable, meaning you cannot bill for an internal project!
