Budget Management and Change Orders are now available in beta for Premium and Enterprise customers. Budget Management and Change Orders are the first releases in our larger Project Management suite in 2022-2023.
Upcoming releases related to Project Management include WIP (work in progress) and advanced billing features. 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 and Change Orders featured within ServiceTrade are 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 Project Management features provide 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 Project Management, an admin user in your ServiceTrade account must assign your office staff special role activities.
This article will walk you through the two ways to set up your office users with the correct activities to create and/or view budgets on a job. You must first request access to be an early beta tester by reaching out to your ServiceTrade Account Manager or email am@servicetrade.com.
Project Management Role Activity Permissions
There are three new role activities in ServiceTrade that you can add to custom roles to allow users to create, edit, delete and view budgets on Jobs.
New Project Management Role Activities
- View Budgets - To have access to only viewing budgets.
- Manage Budgets - To have access to create, edit, delete, and view budgets regardless of who created the budget.
- Manage Own Budgets - To have access to create, edit, delete, and view budgets created by the user.
Note: All default Account Admin users are automatically granted all of these activity role permissions.
Adding Project Management to Existing Roles
First, you must know how to create and manage custom roles.
In addition to budget permissions, users also need to have access to labor and non-labor cost 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 Project Management activity role permissions to non-admin users:
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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."
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Copy an existing role, add the appropriate budget permissions, and then assign the users that you want to have access to project 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.