This article describes functionality of our new project module. This module is being rolled out gradually, so it is possible you do not have access to the features described here yet. If that is the case, you can still find documentation on the previous project module here.
Managing project budgets can be complex, but with the right tools you gain more visibility, flexibility, and control. From tracking what’s left in your budget to monitoring project health and preventing overspending, you’ll always know where your finances stand. Read all about managing your project budget in Teamleader Focus here.
Project budget
To manage a project budget effectively, it’s important to know what each budget field in a project means. Here’s an overview of the main fields:
! In order to view these fields you need user access to ‘Financials on a project’. Find more information here.
- Budget: the maximum agreed amount that the customer may be invoiced for the entire project.
- Cost budget: an internal limit on how much cost may be incurred for the project.
- Budget spent: the part of the customer budget that has already been used, based on actual work performed.
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Budget remaining: the part of the customer budget that is still remaining.
- Budget - budget spent = Budget remaining
- Know that this field can be negative and when it is, a warning icon will be shown
- Budget progress: a visual progress bar that tracks the progress of budget spent compared to the set budget.
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Time budget: a threshold set by the project owner for the total time tracked on a project. Use this if you want to make sure the total time tracked on the project stays within a certain threshold.
Find more information on the other project financials in Teamleader Focus here.
Project health widget
In every project you’ll find a project health widget.
Simply navigate to a project and click on the tab ‘Project info’.
In ‘Project health’, you’ll find an overview of the following financial & time indicators:
- Budget remaining
- Time budget remaining
- Amount unbilled: the portion of the project's total price that remains unbilled.
- Margin: difference between the money a company earns and the money it spends (costs).
- Pending work: all tasks, meetings and materials with a status set to To do, In progress or On hold.
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Cost budget remaining: amount of cost budget left after deducting the cost.
Users can choose which tiles to display here (min 1, max 6) via the cogwheel in the top right-hand corner. This is saved per user.
Top-down budget management
In projects, budgets can exist on different levels:
- The overall project budget;
- The groups within the project;
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and the items within those groups such as tasks, materials or meetings.
Top-down budget management lets you decide whether group budgets or item (tasks/materials/meetings) budgets remain independent or influence the total group or project budget.
Example
Let’s say your project budget is €1000, and the budget of your first group is €500. Now you add a task to this group with a budget of €1500. At this point, you’ll see the following message:
“We noticed some budgets are not set yet. Do you want to update them?”
You can then choose to:
- Auto-increase the project budget;
- Auto-increase the group budget;
- Do both, or
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Do nothing.
If you save your choice, it will also apply to future changes. You can always adjust this setting later in your project preferences.
Going back to our example: if you check both boxes, the project budget and the group budget will both increase to €1500. If you then add another task in the same group for €200, both budgets will again increase to €1700. You’ll be notified each time this happens.
When you move project lines to another group, the new group’s budget will increase if the total budget of the project lines exceeds the previous budget. However, budgets never decrease automatically. So if you move all tasks out of the original group, that group’s budget will stay as it is.