Budget Overview
No matter how you create the budget:
By winning a deal,
Whether you're building it from scratch,
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.
Important: Productive is rolling out a new Services overview, currently in Beta. If your services don’t look like the examples in this article, you might still be using the old services overview. Some fields and layouts described here may not yet appear in your account, but the functionality remains the same.
For easier navigation, you'll notice that the main budget elements include:
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.
Navigation pane: Contains tabs like Overview, Services, Time, Expenses, Invoices, Purchase Orders, Scenarios, Recurring budgets, and the Feed.
Budget editor: Allows setting up services, rates, billing types and units, your time estimates, 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) No default services (Open Hours/Expenses off)
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) Default services (Open Hours/Expenses on)
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) Editing an existing budget
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 Overview
In the budget editor, you can:
Manually add services via + New item
Import predefined services from rate cards
You'll notice that each service line item section consists of:
Service Section (optional) | Custom group label to organize services (e.g., Phase 1) |
Service Name | A short freehand description of the service. |
Service Type | What you offer to a client, as defined in the settings, as well as your basis for later profit analysis. |
Billing Type | Time and materials, Fixed, or Non-billable. For more information on the billing types, refer to this article. |
Tracking Unit | Hours, Days or Piece (used for expenses). For more information on tracking 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. More on tracking options here. |
Estimate | The Estimate column lets you manually input an approximation of hours for services with Fixed billing types. More on setting time estimates here. |
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. |
Budget total | 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.
📌 Open the Fields menu above the service section name to add additional fields like service custom fields, Discount, Markup, and service Description.
Duplicating Services and Sections
To save time, you can:
Duplicate a single service: Click the three-dot menu next to the service > Duplicate
Duplicate an entire section: Click the three-dot menu next to the section > Duplicate
This keeps structure and settings intact, allowing you to reuse and adapt your setups quickly.
Internal Budgets
Budgets tied to internal projects use Non-billable services by default. They reflect internal time, costs, and expenses but cannot be invoiced.
Use them to track internal work like meetings, onboarding, or R&D.
