Budgeting: project budgets, team rates, retainers and forecasting
The Budgeting module bundles six sub-tabs — Budgeting (overview), Team Rates, Retainers, Profitability, Expenses and Forecast. It shows how far each project is into its budget, what your team costs, and when a budget will run out.
- You're signed in and your organization has the "Budgeting" module activated.
- Team Rates, Profitability, and the revenue outlook in Forecast require the Owner or Admin role.
- A project needs a configured budget to show values in Overview, Retainers or Forecast — budgets are set up on the project itself, not inside the Budgeting module.
- 1
The six tabs at a glance
At the top of the module you switch between six tabs: confusingly, the first tab carries the same name as the module itself ("Budgeting") and shows the project overview; then come Team Rates, Retainers, Profitability, Expenses and Forecast. The selection is stored as ?tab=... in the URL, so you can link directly to a tab.
- 2
Project overview (first tab)
The table shows every project with a budget-type badge (Fixed fee, Hours, T&M, Internal, Retainer), a usage bar (logged hours or amount against the limit), and a traffic-light status: green "On budget", yellow "Warning", red "Over budget", blue "No cap" (tracking without a ceiling), or grey "No budget". Projects without a budget only show logged hours, if any.
- 3
Maintain team rates (Owner/Admin only)
The "Team Rates" tab is fully locked unless you're Owner or Admin — you'll see only a notice instead of the table. Per member you enter a role label, cost rate (internal hourly rate, never shown to regular members), bill rate (client rate) and currency. These rates feed Profitability and the revenue projection in Forecast — without a bill rate on file, margin calculation stays empty for that person.
- 4
Keep an eye on retainers
The "Retainers" tab lists only projects whose budget type is set to "Retainer" on the project. It shows the contracted amount, consumption in the current period, the next reset date (if monthly reset is on), and status. A freshly created retainer sits in "Draft" and doesn't count yet — a yellow warning "Draft — open the project and activate it" links straight to the project.
- 5
Review profitability (Owner/Admin only)
Shows, per project, billed hours, revenue (bill rate × hours), cost (cost rate × hours), margin in euros and percent, plus a totals row across all projects. Without rates on the Team Rates tab the list stays empty — the hint text calls this out directly.
- 6
Log expenses
"Log expense" opens a form with description, amount, date, an optional project link, a markup percentage (passed on to the client), and a "Billable" checkbox. Saved expenses can be deleted via a trash icon that only appears when hovering the row.
- 7
Use Forecast and What-If
The Forecast tab shows, per project, the burn rate (avg. hours/week over the last 8 weeks), a trend arrow, a mini sparkline, and — if an hours budget exists — a traffic-light badge reading "~X wk. left" until exhaustion. At the top: org capacity (team size × hours/week), utilization, and, Owner/Admin only, projected revenue per week. The What-If panel below lets you simulate extra or reduced weekly hours on a project and immediately shows the new exhaustion date.
Budgets are set up on the project, not in the Budgeting module
There's no "Create budget" button here. Budget type, limit, and retainer settings are configured on the project itself; the Budgeting module only aggregates values across all projects.
Draft retainers don't count
A retainer budget must be activated on the project before consumption, reset date, and status show meaningfully on the Retainers tab. While in draft, you only see the yellow warning link to the project.
Cost rate is strictly Owner/Admin — so is the rest of the tab
The entire Team Rates tab (including bill rate) is locked for regular members, not just the cost-rate column. Profitability and the revenue portion of Forecast are Owner/Admin-only for the same reason.
No rate, no margin
If a member has no bill rate set, their hours still count toward hour totals, but not toward revenue or margin on the Profitability tab.
More articles are coming soon.