Budgeting
The Budget tab is where you plan what a project should cost and watch what it actually costs. Budgets are built as a tree — grouped lines you can nest, reorder, and roll up — and the actual side of each line stays live by pulling from the operational data.
The budget tree
Open the Budget tab and you get a collapsible tree of budget lines. Each line is one cost element with:
- Name and a budget type (the category)
- Quantity, unit cost, and unit of measure (or a flat planned amount)
- Planned amount — what you budgeted
- Actual amount — what's been spent (see source linking)
- Variance — planned minus actual, flagged red when over
Lines can be groups that contain child lines, so you can structure a budget by phase, by area, or by trade and let the totals roll up bottom-to-top. Drag the handle to reorder or re-nest lines.
Budget categories
| Category | Color | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Labor | blue | Crew hours × rate. |
| Materials | green | Items and supplies. |
| Equipment | purple | Machines, rentals. |
| Overhead | orange | Indirect costs, often a % of base. |
| Other | gray | Anything else. |
The category drives how costs are calculated and how markup is applied during conversion.
Planned vs. actual: source linking
The power of the budget tree is that actual cost is computed, not typed. Link a budget line to one or more sources, and ianaiERP keeps its actual amount in sync:
| Source | What it pulls in |
|---|---|
| Workforces | Approved time entries for those people on this project (hours × rate) — ideal for Labor lines. |
| Vendors | Bills from that supplier on this project. |
| Accounts | Bills and expenses posted to those GL accounts. |
| Items | Bill line items for those catalog items. |
Once a line has sources, its actual amount is read-only and shows a breakdown of where each dollar came from. Lines with no sources let you enter actuals by hand. Either way, the variance updates as real costs land — so cost-to-date is always current without re-keying invoices.
The cost calculator
For lines that need a quick build-up, open the Cost Calculator. It offers three methods:
- Materials — add several items with quantities; it fetches unit prices and totals them.
- Labor — pick a worker or role and enter hours; it fetches the rate and totals hours × rate.
- Overhead — apply a percentage of labor, of materials, or of the total, or enter a fixed amount.
The result drops straight onto the budget line.
Budget templates & catalogs
Don't rebuild the same estimate every job. Budget templates are reusable cost structures you can drop into a project:
- Organization templates — your company's saved budgets.
- Global / industry templates — starter structures by trade (construction, roofing, plumbing, painting, and more).
- Supplier price lists — vendor-provided pricing.
Browse the catalog, pick the lines you want, and add them to the project — optionally under a chosen phase or parent group. You can also save the current budget as a template to reuse it later.
Tip — item category filters. In company settings you can restrict which item categories appear when picking items for budget lines, so the dropdown only shows the materials your team actually buys.
The budget summary
The top of the tab summarizes the whole project:
- Planned budget, actual cost, variance, and variance %, with a utilization bar.
- A category breakdown — planned vs. actual for Labor, Materials, Equipment, Overhead, and Other.
Turning a budget into a quote
When the budget is ready, convert it to a customer-facing document directly from this tab:
- Convert to Estimate — generates a sales estimate with your budget lines as priced line items.
- Convert to Contract — generates a signable contract.
Both apply markup on the way out (a default percentage, with optional per-category overrides) and can be itemized or grouped by phase. The full flow — markup, contract templates, and e-signature — is covered in Estimates & Contracts.