Budget Management is now available in beta for Premium and Enterprise customers. Budget Management is the first release in our larger Project Management suite in 2022. Upcoming releases related to Project Management include WIP (work in progress) and advanced billing features, among others. If you are interested in getting early access to budget management, reach out to your ServiceTrade Account Manager or email am@servicetrade.com.
The Budget Management feature within ServiceTrade is part of the Project Management umbrella which allows Premium and Enterprise customers to better manage cost expectations for projects or jobs regardless of size through the lifecycle of the project or job.
Furthermore, the Budget Management feature provides better insight into seen and unforeseen changes to better manage the impact on a project's or job's bottom line.
For your office to utilize Budget Management, an admin user in your ServiceTrade account must assign your office staff special role permissions.
This article will walk you through the two ways to set up your office users with the correct permissions to create and/or view budgets on a job.
Budget Management Role Activity Permissions
There are two new role activity role permissions in ServiceTrade that you can add to custom roles to allow users to create, edit, delete and view budgets on jobs.
New Budget Management Role Activities
- View Budgets - To have access to only viewing budgets Users need to be granted this activity role permission.
- Manage Budgets - To have access to create, edit, delete, and view budgets regardless of who created the budget. Users need to be granted this activity role permission.
Note: All Admin users are automatically granted both budget management activity role permissions.
Adding Budget Management to Existing Roles
First, you will need to know how to create and manage custom roles.
In addition to budgets permissions users also need to have access to labor and non-labor costs activities permissions because budgets = costs. Activity permissions below:
- View and Edit Non-Labor Item Costs
- View and Edit Labor Item Costs
Below are two recommended ways for assigning appropriate Budget Management activity role permissions to non-admin users:
-
Add activity permissions to an existing role
In the example below, I want my user with the existing custom role "Director of Sales" to be able to view budgets.
I am granting the activities of "View Budgets", "View and Edit Non-Labor Item Costs" and "View and Edit Labor Item Costs."
-
Copy an existing role, add the appropriate budget permissions, and then assign the users that you want to have access to budget management.
In the example below, I want some of my Account Managers to have the ability to create, edit, view, and delete budgets.
I am copying the "Account Manager" Role, and granting the activities of "Manage Budgets", "View and Edit Non-Labor Item Costs" and "View and Edit Labor Item Costs"
Then I am renaming the Role to "Budget Manager."
All I have to do now is assign the users I want to manage budgets to the new role.
Questions?
Contact ServiceTrade support at support@servicetrade.com.