Project budget

The project budget brings together planned and actual costs and revenue. It is on the project’s Budget tab. The budget is made of budget items (see Budget items): for each item you add forecasts, the amounts you expect (see Budget forecasts), and actuals, the amounts that have really been received or spent (see Budget actuals).

The tab is visible when the Budget module is switched on for the organization (see Currency and decimal places), ticked in the project (project menu, Functionalities, see Project functionalities) and the user has the Budget project permission: View lets you browse and Admin lets you change the budget (see Project permissions). Project templates have their own budget tab (see Budget in a template).

The tab has three views, switched on the right of the bar: List, By period and Actuals (see Budget views).

Forecast, Actual, Baseline and difference

• Forecast — the total of an item’s forecasts, the amounts expected.
• Actual — the total of the actuals assigned to the item, the amounts already spent or received.
• Amount — Forecast plus Actual, the current value of the item: what has already happened plus what is still expected. In the item panel this value is called Total.
• Baseline — the value approved in the project baseline. It is not calculated on the fly: the application records the item amount when a baseline that includes the budget is approved. The first approved baseline is stored separately and never changes afterwards. The Baseline column and the difference columns appear after the first budget baseline is approved.
• Difference — the gap between the amount and the baseline, shown as an amount and a percentage (Difference, Difference [%]). The Progress column shows what part of the baseline the amount is.

Group items add up the values of the items below them. Actuals that are not assigned to any item still count towards the project total and appear in the Unassigned row; the Total row gathers the values of the whole budget. To learn how to approve a baseline, see Project baseline.

Currency and decimal places

The Budget module, the currency and the way amounts are displayed are set once for the whole organization and apply to all projects. The settings are changed by an organization administrator.

1. In the main menu, open System settings, the Budget tab.
2. Switch the module on with the Enable / Disable switch. Switching it off does not delete data; it only hides the Budget tab for all users.
3. Choose the currency in Currency.
4. On the Budget items card, choose the number of decimal places in Decimal places (0, 1 or 2).
5. In Amount display, choose how negative and positive amounts are marked. Each option shows an example.

Changes are saved at once. The Budget items card also has item attributes (see Budget item attributes), and the Actuals card has actual attributes (see Budget actual attributes).