In the top right corner of the budget screen, there are two key options to help you manage your budgets:
Watch or Unwatch a Budget
Share a Budget
Sharing Budgets
Sharing budgets allows you to grant access to specific team members or entire teams, enabling them to track time and log expenses against services in the budget. Here’s how to share a budget:
Access Sharing Options
Click on the sharing icon in the upper-right corner of the budget screen.
Select Team Members or Teams
Choose specific users, teams or groups to share the budget with. Learn more about Productive's Teams here.To remove a user or team from the budget's sharing options, click the bin icon on the right.
Permissions
Shared team members can track time, log expenses and be booked for services within the budget in the Resource Planner.
📌 You can see the full list of individual users added to the budget by clicking on the "Who can track time and expenses" option in the sharing window.
This sharing process is especially important for staff users who require explicit access to budgets to perform tasks like time tracking or expense logging.
Permission-Based Access: Staff Users
Staff users have limited permissions:
They can’t access the Budgets tab or see other users’ expenses.
They can track time or log expenses only on budgets that have been shared with them.
📌 Tip: If a budget doesn’t appear when tracking time (via My Time or Timer), it likely hasn’t been shared with you. Read more about tracking time against a budget.
Bulk-Adding Users to Multiple Budgets
If a user’s permission set changes, they may lose access to budgets they were previously part of.
For example, if a user’s permission set changes from Manager (unrestricted) to Manager (restricted) (i.e., their permission changes from "View all budgets" to "View budgets where the user is a member"), they will no longer have access to budgets they weren’t explicitly added to.
This can become a hassle if you have many budgets, as each budget would need to be updated manually to add the user back.
Similarly, when a new user is added to Productive, someone with sufficient permissions (like an Admin or an unrestricted Manager) needs to go into each budget and manually add the new user. This can be time-consuming, especially if there are many budgets to manage.
To simplify this, you can bulk-add users to multiple budgets at once. By selecting multiple budgets, you can quickly add a user (or a team) to all of them with just a few clicks, saving time and effort.
Here’s how to do it:
Select multiple budgets by checking the boxes next to the budget name.
Click Share in the blue toolbar above the budgets list.
Choose the user(s) or team(s) you want to add to the selected budgets.
Confirm by selecting Share, and the user(s) will be granted access to all selected budgets at once.
Bulk-Updating Budget Owners
In addition to bulk-adding users, you can also update the owner of multiple budgets at once.
The flow is the same: select the budgets you want to update, click the Owner option in the blue toolbar, choose the new owner, and confirm.
This makes it easier to reassign ownership across multiple items without editing them one by one.
Dynamic Groups of People Added to the Budget by Default
Users with Access to All Budgets
This dynamic group cannot be removed from the budget's sharing options and serves as a note, letting you know that users with sufficient permissions like Admins, Managers (unrestricted), or Profitability Managers (unrestricted) will have access to this budget due to their viewing permissions.
Project Members
These are the users who have access to the project the budget belongs to (if the budget is part of a project).
Sometimes, you might want to keep these two separate. This group can be manually removed by selecting the bin icon to the right, allowing you to add selected individuals.
Watching Budgets
Watching a budget ensures you receive all notifications related to that budget, keeping you updated on any changes or activities. Here’s how to watch or unwatch a budget:
Watch a Budget
Click the eye icon in the upper-right corner. If the icon is not crossed out, you are watching the budget and will receive notifications.
Unwatch a Budget
Click the eye icon again to unwatch the budget. The icon will be crossed out.
📌 Note that budget owners cannot unwatch the budget.
Recap: Why Staff Users Can’t See Budgets by Default
Staff users:
Don’t have access to the Budgets tab.
Can’t view other users' expenses.
Can only interact with budgets that have been explicitly shared with them (for time or expense tracking).
These restrictions reflect their role-based permissions and help keep budget access limited to relevant team members.