Project budgets and the billing plan

Every project has a Budget tab. It answers two questions: are we going to finish inside the budget, and what do we bill, when? ProjectSmith does the planning and the approving; Autotask still raises the invoice.

Everyone with a seat can see a project’s budget. Only people with a Planner seat can change it or its billing plan; a project manager needs a Planner seat for this too.

Set the budget

1. Open the project and choose the Budget tab.
2. Choose Edit budget.
3. Enter the budget for the whole project, in hours, money or both. Add a note if it helps, such as the statement of work it comes from.
4. If the project has phases, give any phase its own hours and money. Phases come from the Phases tab.
5. Choose Save budget.

Clear both figures on a line to remove that line’s budget. If you budget the phases but not the whole project, the project total is the sum of the phases.

Money is in your workspace’s currency, before tax.

Read the figures

Figure	What it means
Actual	Approved time at each person’s cost rate, plus approved costs and expenses. Submitted time that isn’t approved yet shows as pending.
Burn	Actual as a percentage of the budget.
Forecast at completion	Actual, plus pending time, plus the work left: each open task’s estimate less the hours already logged on it (never below zero), costed at the project’s blended cost rate.
Variance	Budget less forecast. A negative variance means the project is heading over budget.

Screenshot placeholder: the Budget tab with the four cards and the budget by phase.

The colour tells you where things are heading: green when the forecast is within 90% of the budget, amber above 90%, red over budget.

Time on a task in a phase counts towards that phase. Time logged against the project with no task, and tasks with no phase, count towards the whole project only (the Not in a phase line).

Cost rates

Each person’s cost rate is set in Settings > Users. Someone with no cost rate is costed at zero, and the Budget tab names them with a link to set it. Changing a rate re-costs that person’s past time on every project, so budgets always use today’s rates.

Plan billing milestones

The billing plan lists the fixed-price payments for the project. Each milestone has a description, an amount and a trigger that makes it ready to bill:

• On a date: ready on that day.
• When a task is done: ready once the task reaches a Done column on the board.

ProjectSmith checks the triggers every night and marks due milestones Ready to bill. A manager can also choose Ready to mark one straight away. Ready milestones are sent to the project’s Autotask contract as contract milestones, and Autotask invoices them as usual.

A milestone can be edited only while it is Planned. To stop a planned or ready milestone from being billed, cancel it; a cancelled or planned milestone can then be deleted. Milestones Autotask has billed show as Billed and can’t be changed.

The By month table adds up planned, ready and billed amounts by month, so you can see what is coming.

Available from the Autotask connector release

Budgets, actuals and the billing plan work today. Sending ready milestones to Autotask, and showing which ones Autotask has billed, arrive with the Autotask connector. Approved costs and expenses count towards actuals once cost and expense approvals are available.

Common questions

Why is the forecast higher than the actual already? The forecast adds the work still to do on open tasks. Keep task estimates up to date and it stays honest.

Who sees the money? Everyone with a seat who can open the project sees the totals by phase. Individual cost rates are only shown in Settings > Users.

Does the budget change anything in Autotask? Not yet. Milestones go to Autotask; the budget stays in ProjectSmith.