Budgets and tracking progress

A budget on a project is a ceiling you measure against. It can be expressed in hours or in money, for the whole project or split per task or per person.

It is a measurement, not a limit. Temponia warns you as a budget fills up and shows you how far past it you are, but nothing is blocked when the ceiling is reached.

Choose a budget type

The Budget field on the project offers seven options:

• No budget
• Total project hours and Total project fees, one figure for the whole project
• Hours per task and Fees per task, a figure for each task
• Hours per person and Fees per person, a figure for each assigned person

For the whole-project options the amount goes in Total budgeted hours or Total budgeted fees, which appear directly under the selector. For the per task and per person options the figures go in the Budget hours or Budget amount columns of the Project's tasks and Users assigned panels, one row at a time.

Money budgets are measured against the value of the tracked time, so they depend on the rates that apply. Hours budgets are measured against duration and ignore rates entirely.

Retainers do not use this field. The budget selector is hidden on retainer projects, because the hours included in each period already act as the budget. See Billing types.

The e-mail alert

Under the budget fields sits E-mail alert if project reaches, a number, and % of budget. Tick the checkbox to enable the number field. Any whole number from 0 to 150 is accepted, so you can warn yourself at 80 per cent or at 110.

• The mail goes to everyone on the project marked PM.
• Its subject is "Project surpassed budget threshold", and it shows actual against budget with a link straight to the budget report.
• It is sent once. Changing the threshold, or switching the alert off and on again, re-arms it. On a retainer, a new period re-arms it.
• Projects are checked every hour, so an alert arrives shortly after the threshold is crossed rather than instantly.

One limit is worth knowing. The alert covers Total project hours and Total project fees. Per task and per person budgets are reported in full but do not produce the mail, so those need someone to look at the report.

On a retainer the same checkbox reads % of the included hours and is measured against the current period.

Where progress is visible

The project dashboard, reached from the chart icon next to a project on Manage, then Projects. It shows a chart of budget against actual titled with the budget type, and a Budget follow-up dial with the percentage consumed. A retainer instead shows used against available hours and a Retainer periods table with hours available, hours used and the balance per period.

The project report, under Reports, then Project report. Projects are grouped by client, and you pick what to show in Columns to include: Budget, Spent, Graph, Remaining, Budget %, Cost, Spent hours, Spent money, Progress, Fee, Fee invoiced and Fee profit. Remaining turns red once it goes negative. Set Details to one of the full detail options to expand each project into its tasks and people.

To look only at projects that have a budget, set the project filter to Budgeted projects.

Progress is a separate judgement

Spend tells you how much has gone in. It does not tell you how far the work actually is. Mark progress on the project report lets you type a completion percentage from 0 to 100 by hand, next to the measured spend, so 60 per cent of the budget against 30 per cent of the work is visible as a problem.

The button appears once Progress is one of the columns you include. You can mark progress on the project row for whole-project budgets, and on task rows for per task budgets.

What happens when a budget is exceeded

Nothing is blocked. Time can still be tracked against the project, timers still run, and the entries can still be invoiced. Going over budget produces exactly two things: the threshold e-mail, once, if you enabled it, and a negative Remaining with a percentage above 100 in the reports.

There is no setting that stops people tracking time on an exhausted budget. What the retainer billing type adds is not a block either, but an accounting for the overrun: hours beyond the included hours either roll into the next period or are billed at the extra hours rate you set.