Productive

Budgets

A budget is where your financials are stored. It's made of services, estimates, expenses, time entries and actual profit vs. estimated.

What Is a Budget?

Learn what services are in Productive, how they connect tracking, resourcing, invoicing, and help analyze profitability.

What Are Services?

Use the customizable Services tab for budget and deal views to track budgeting, profitability, and scheduling with flexible, permission-based access.

The Services Tab in Budgets and Deals

Effortlessly create budgets from deals. Track and manage your projects with connected deals and budgets for simplified operations.

Understanding the Link Between Deals and Budgets

Create and manage budgets without projects.

Standalone Budgets: No Project Required

Create rate cards in Productive for efficient pricing. Simplify deal and budget creation with predefined service rates using rate cards.

Setting up Rate Cards

Easily update rate cards by exporting them in import-ready format, adjusting rates, and reimporting them in Settings > Data Import.

Updating Rate Cards Using Export and Import

Budget Basics

Create a new budget once your deal is won or create it from your Project management or Financials tab.

How to Create a New Budget

Learn how to add and configure services in your budgets in Productive.

Adding Services to a Budget

Learn how to create and customize your budget to best fit your project needs.

Setting up a Budget: Budget Editor

Service types define what you sell to your clients and help you analyze your profitability in the long run.

Understanding Service Types

Organize your services with clear names, sections, and descriptions to simplify tracking, budgeting, and billing in Productive

Service Names, Sections, and Descriptions

Choose how services are billed and tracked in Productive: Fixed, Time and Materials, Non-billable, or Percentage.

Billing Types

Add a percentage-based fee to your budget that auto-calculates revenue based on other billable services.

Percentage Billing Type

Choose how to track services in Productive: by hours, days, or pieces to log work, plan resources, and recognize revenue accurately.

Tracking Units: Hours, Days, or Pieces

Enable or disable time tracking, expense tracking, and resource scheduling (bookings) for services in your budget.

Managing Tracking Options for Budgets and Deals

Set estimates for services to plan hours, guide Resource Planner bookings, and track effort vs. sold work without affecting invoices.

Adding Time Estimates to Budgets

Add and track initial service cost estimates to compare them with scheduled and actual costs across budgets and reports.

Adding Cost Estimates to Budgets

Define service quantity, price, discounts, and markups to shape invoiced amounts, manage costs, and track profitability in Productive.

Quantity, Price, Discounts, and Markups

Set a maximum price for Time and Materials services. Define a fixed cap in the budget editor, ensuring client invoices stay within limits.

Guaranteed Maximum Price Option

Stop users from tracking time on services that have reached their limit to prevent budget overspend.

Budget Overrun Limitations: Disable Time Tracking at the Service Limit

Budget templates make it easy to start new budgets and keep things organized in Productive.

Budget Templates

Budget Setup

Use recurring budgets to manage retainer or maintenance projects. Recurring budgets are either created automatically or triggered manually.

Recurring Budgets

Learn how bookings interact with recurring budgets in Productive and how timing affects where they’re assigned.

Recurring Bookings on Recurring Budgets

Track unused hours in recurring budgets with the Retainer Hours Rollover feature. Simplify time management without affecting invoicing.

Retainer Hours Rollover

Learn how to set up and manage budgets that repeat automatically, including bookings, invoicing, and hour rollovers.

Learn when and why to use the Simple Editor to quickly set up budgets and deals.

Simple Editor: Overview

Step-by-step instructions for setting up a budget or deal using the Simple Editor in Productive.

How to Set Up a Budget or Deal Using the Simple Editor

Learn how to set up a Time and Materials budget or deal in the Simple Editor, including billable rates, estimates, and non-billable services.

Simple Editor: Time and Materials Budget Type Explained

Learn how to set up a Fixed Price budget or deal in the Simple Editor, including billable rates, estimates, and non-billable services.

Simple Editor: Fixed Price Budget Type Explained

Learn how to set up a Non-billable budget in the Simple Editor to track internal work and hours without billing the client.

Simple Editor: Non-Billable Budget Type Explained

Set up budgets and deals faster with the Simple Editor: a guided, structured alternative to the Advanced Editor for straightforward billing setups.

Simple Editor

Open hours and expenses help you start allocating resources and tracking time before finalizing the services you are offering.

Open Hours and Expenses

Control time tracking and expense logging by assigning specific people or service types for more accurate project management.

Restricting Time Tracking and Expense Logging in Productive

Setting Up a Lump Sum Budget

Apply fixed-amount discounts to your budgets and services to ensure accurate reporting and clear communication with your clients.

Best Practices for Applying Fixed-Amount Discounts

Add budget or deal-specific cost rates without changing your default cost rates.

Custom Cost Rates on Budgets and Deals

Learn how to create and apply custom fields for services in budgets, deals, and rate cards.

Adding Custom Fields for Services

Budget Customization

Learn to share budgets with your team and ensure you're always informed about budget activities with watch notifications.

Sharing Options for Budgets

Learn how to move your budget to a different project.

Moving a Budget to a Different Project

Learn how to reassign a budget or a project to a new client in Productive.

Changing the Client Company for a Project or a Budget

Navigate budgets in Productive using tabs for Overview, Services, Time, Expenses, Invoices, POs, Scenarios, Recurring budgets, and Feed.

Getting Around the Budget: Budget Navigation Tabs

Navigate budgets in Productive via the sidebar: manage settings, clients, custom fields, and generate PDF documents.

Getting Around the Budget: The Budget Sidebar

What is a budget date and what is it used for?

Budget Start and End Dates

Follow the steps below to safely remove a budget and understand how to manage deleted budgets within the Recycle Bin.

How to Delete a Budget

Learn how to move a service from one deal or budget to another while keeping all associated time entries, expenses, and bookings intact.

Moving Services Between Deals and Budgets

Budget Navigation and Management 

Enable and use time approvals to ensure approvers review and approve time entries before they become visible to clients or recognized.

Time Approval in Budgets

Track time spent on services within a budget. Manage and analyze time entries by grouping, editing, and exporting reports in Productive.

Tracking and Managing Time Entries in Budgets

Set up automated notifications to alert budget owners when a percentage of billable time is used, ensuring effective budget management.

Setting Up Automated Time Warnings for Budgets

Adjust billable time entries to the nearest specified interval with easy-to-configure settings.

Rounding of Billable Time Entries

Check the Overview tab in your budget to gain insights into your budget's financial health and performance.

The Budget Overview Tab

Track and manage budgets and profitability with detailed forecasting and profitability charts in Productive.

Forecasting and Profitability Charts in Budgets

Finalize and deliver a budget after ensuring all work is complete and time entries are logged before invoicing your client.

Delivering a Budget

Automate budget delivery to save time, ensure on-time completion, and notify stakeholders.

Delivering Budgets with Automations

Learn the difference between billable and recognized time in Productive. Billable is chargeable—recognized aligns with budget limits.

The Difference Between Billable and Recognized Time

Learn how to manually mark budgets as invoiced in Productive, resolving alerts, rounding errors, and external invoicing scenarios.

Marking a Budget as Invoiced

Understand why there may be a small difference, one or two cents, between totals shown across reports, budgets, and invoices in Productive.

Why Do I See Small Differences in Totals Across Productive?

Monitoring Progress

A guide to expense account settings in Productive — covering payment fields, reimbursement, approval, markup defaults, and how to review logged expenses.

Expenses: Admin Overview

Set up a service in your budget to track billable or unbillable expenses in Productive and enable users to log them correctly.

How to Set Up an Expense Line Item in a Budget

Learn how to access the expense input screen.

Where to Find the Expense Input Screen?

Learn how to fill in and submit an expense in Productive, from basic details and line items to payment, reimbursement, and attachments.

How to Submit an Expense

Save an expense without linking it to a budget or deal. You can assign a service and allocate it later.

How to Submit an Expense Without Selecting a Service (Beta)

Set up expense approvals in Productive — configure policies, assign approvers, and understand how the approval flow works for submitters and reviewers.

Expense Approval: Setup and Flow

There are a few reasons why you may be unable to add an expense item for a service in Productive. Let's see what they are!

Can't Log an Expense?

Quickly duplicate an expense with most details intact, saving time and ensuring consistency when managing similar expenses.

How to Duplicate an Expense

Use the Tax on Expenses feature to select tax rates during expense entry, ensuring accurate cost calculations and tax tracking.

Including Tax When Submitting Expenses

Learn how to submit an expense with no internal cost and bill the client a fixed amount using the markup field.

How to Log a Zero-Cost Billable Expense

Expenses

Learn how to manage Purchase Orders (POs), from creation to linking with expenses, ensuring precise financial tracking and compliance.

Purchase Orders

Manage and transfer Purchase Order (PO) numbers from sales deals to budgets and invoices, for smooth and accurate financial documentation.

Managing Purchase Order Numbers in Productive

Answers to common questions about creating and managing purchase orders in Productive.

Purchase Orders FAQ

Understand how revenue is recognized for different service billing types in Productive.

Understanding Revenue Recognition in Productive

Find out about how revenue can be recognized for your fixed billing type services in Productive.

Fixed Price Revenue Recognition Models

Set custom revenue recognition periods for budgets: distribute revenue evenly or across manually defined periods.

Custom Revenue Recognition for Budgets

How future bookings affect recognized revenue and what happens when your budget cap is at stake.

Revenue Recognition for Tentative Bookings

Revenue Recognition

Time and expenses approval policies for budgets help manage submissions by defining who approves time entries and expenses.

What Are Time and Expenses Approval Policies for Budgets?

Create and configure policies for budgets to control how time and expense submissions are approved.

Setting Up Time and Expenses Approval Policies for Budgets

Learn how to assign or update time and expenses approval policies for budgets to automate approvals.

Assigning a Time and Expenses Approval Policy to a Budget

Modify, archive, or restore approval policies to keep approvals aligned with organizational changes.

Managing Time and Expenses Approval Policies for Budgets

Define who can approve time entries and expenses in budgets.

Time and Expenses Approval Policies for Budgets

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