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 of lines you can nest under groups, and the actual side of each line is tracked from real transactions rather than typed in.
The budget tree
Each budget line carries a name, description, code, type, quantity, unit of measure, unit cost, planned amount and actual amount. Lines can sit under groups, so you can structure a budget by area or trade and let totals roll up.
How a line's planned amount is decided: when both Quantity and Unit Cost are set, the planned amount is quantity × unit cost; otherwise the amount you typed is used. A group's planned and actual totals are the sum of its children.
Budget types
The Type column offers your company's own budget type list. If your company hasn't set one up, the standard set is Labor, Materials, Equipment, Overhead and Other. The type decides which cost sources a line can link to and which markup applies when the budget becomes an estimate.
Tracking actual cost: Link Cost Sources
The power of the budget tree is that actual cost is computed, not typed. Use Link Cost Sources on a line and its actual amount follows real transactions:
| Source | What it pulls in | Offered on |
|---|---|---|
| Workforces | Those people's approved time entries on this project, at each entry's rate. | Labor lines |
| Vendors | Bills from those vendors for this project, unless cancelled. | Every type except Labor |
| Accounts | Bill lines and approved expense lines booked to those accounts. | Every line |
| Items | Bill lines for those items. | Every line |
Each source shows as its own breakdown row under the line, so you can see where the money came from. Because each source counts at a different moment — a bill as soon as it is entered, time and expenses once approved — a budget can look under-consumed until approvals catch up.
The cost calculator
The Cost Calculator builds a line's planned amount from components and remembers the breakdown, so reopening it shows how the figure was reached. What it offers depends on the line's type:
- Materials — rows of item, quantity and unit price; the unit price and unit of measure are pulled from the item.
- Labor — a workforce member, hours and rate; the rate is pulled from the workforce record.
- Overhead — a percentage of a labor or materials base (starting at 15%), or a fixed amount.
Templates, catalog and BOM
- Apply Budget Template loads a saved template and lets you multiply every amount by a Scale Factor between 0.1 and 10. Template lines are added alongside your existing lines, never replacing them, and arrive flat rather than in groups. A template line lands in the phase with the same name, or unassigned if there isn't one.
- The catalog lets you browse your company's saved budget templates and ready-made starter templates by trade, and add their lines to the project.
- Save Budget as Template captures the current tree — groups, quantities, rates and cost-source settings — for reuse on the next job.
- Generate Budget from BOM builds material and overhead lines from an item's default bill of materials, multiplied by the quantity you enter, and can assign them all to a phase. You review the generated lines and drop any you don't want before applying. An item with no BOM produces a zero-amount placeholder to price yourself. It is offered when your company's industry is Manufacturing, Food & Beverage or Other.
Tip — item category filters. The company setting Budget Item Category Filters restricts which item categories can be picked for budget lines, BOM generation and the cost calculator, so the pickers only show what your team actually buys.
Views and the summary
The tree can be viewed by Budget Group (the hierarchy you built), Budget Type, Phase or Flat (alphabetical). Budget Type and Flat list only the individual lines and leave your groups out — switch back to Budget Group to see the structure. Phase view shows every phase, including ones with no lines yet, plus an Unassigned bucket. Which rows you expanded is remembered per project.
The summary strip shows Planned, Actual and Variance, with utilization (actual ÷ planned) turning red past 100%. Expand By Phase to break the same figures down per phase.
Turning a budget into a quote
When the budget is ready, convert it from this tab:
- Convert to Estimate creates a customer estimate from lines that haven't been converted before. Choose Full itemization (one estimate line per budget line) or Grouped by phase (one line per phase subtotal), and set a markup — it starts at your company's Default Estimate Markup % (20% if that isn't set) and can be overridden per cost category.
- Convert to Contract creates a draft contract from the budget, with a markup applied.
Converting needs permission for the estimate or contract as well as the project. The full flow, including winning an accepted estimate, is in Estimates & Contracts.