Creating Project Budgets

Important:

For information on the availability of Job Costing and Project Budgeting, please contact your account representative.

After you have finished setting up your project budget preferences, you are ready to create budgets for a project. If you plan to roll up budgets from projects tasks to the project record, you should create project task budgets first and then create your project budgets.

Creating Budgets for Project Tasks

You can create budgets for costs and billings at both the project and project task level. Budgets at the project task level will roll up to the project level and you can manually override amounts at the project level.

To create budgets for a project task:

Go to Lists > Relationships > Projects.
Click Edit next to the project you want to update.
On the Schedule tab, click Edit next to the task you want to add a budget for.

The task record opens in a new window.
Click Budget.
On the Cost Budget subtab, check the Show Calculated Lines box to show labor budgets calculated from the applied labor cost and estimated work.
If you want to use the calculated budgets for all cost categories check the Use Calculated Values for all Labor Cost Budgets box.

A message appears warning you that any manual budget entries you have made will be lost, click OK to continue. Checking this box removes the ability to enter any manual budget amounts.

Skip to step 11.
If you want to use the calculated values for selected categories, check the box in the Select column next to Labor categories you want to add values for and then click Set to Calculated.

Note:
Calculated lines are only available when planned time entries are created. To turn on planned time entries, go to the Preferences subtab of the project record and check the Create Planned Time Entries box, and click Save.

The values are automatically populated in the corresponding line.

If you would like the total amount distributed over the life of the task, click Distribute Total.
If you do not want to use calculated values, enter the budgeted amounts for each month in the appropriate column.

Or, enter the total amount budgeted for the entire task in the Task Total column, check the box in the Select column, and then click Distribute Total. You can select multiple lines and distribute the totals of all lines at one time.

Note:
Labor items are the only categories available for automatic calculations on project task budgets.
Enter any additional budgeted amounts for other categories on the cost budget.
Click Billing Budget.
Repeat steps 5–9 for billing budgets.

Note:
If you check the Use Calculated Values for all Labor Billing Budgets box, budgets will not be calculated for any non-billable tasks.
When you have finished, click Save.

After you have created your project task budgets, you can roll them up to your project budget.

Creating Budgets for Project Records

You can create budgets for costs and billings for project records.

To create budgets for a project:

Go to Lists > Relationships > Projects.
Click Edit next to the project you want to add a budget to.
Click Budget.
On the Cost Budget subtab, if you use Resource Allocations and want to calculate labor costs from allocated resources, check Calculate Labor Budgets from Resource Allocations.

Note:
Resource allocations do not allow for a service item to be selected. If you have set your budget categories as service items, all calculated labor budgets will appear in the Labor: Other category when calculated from resource allocations. For more information, see Resource Allocations.
Check the Show Calculated Lines box to show calculated budgets.

For information on how budgets are calculated, see Project Budgets.
If you want to use calculated values for all cost budgets, check the Use Calculated Values for all Cost Budgets box.

A message appears warning you that any manual budget entries you have made will be lost, click OK to continue. Checking this box removes the ability to enter any manual budget amounts.

Skip to step 9.
If you want to use the calculated values for selected categories, check the box in the Select column next to each category you want to add values for and then click Set to Calculated.

The values are automatically populated in the corresponding line.

If you would like the total amount distributed over the life of the task, click Distribute Total.
If you do not want to use calculated values, enter the budgeted amounts for each month in the appropriate column.

Or, enter the total amount budgeted for the entire project in the Project Total column, check the box in the Select column, and then click Distribute Total. You can select multiple lines and distribute the totals of all lines at one time.
Click Billing Budget.
Repeat steps 5–8 for billing budgets.

Note:
If you check the Use Calculated Values for all Labor Billing Budgets box, budgets will not be calculated for any non-billable tasks.
When you have finished, click Save.

When you have finished updating your project budgets, on the Financial tab, the Estimated Costs and Estimated Revenue fields automatically update with values from your project budgets.