Creating Budgets for a Job (Project)

Project Management is now available in beta for Premium and Enterprise customers. Upcoming releases related to Project Management include advanced billing features. If you want early access to budget management, contact your ServiceTrade Account Manager or email am@servicetrade.com.

There may be times when you have a job where you need to track your cost.

Budgets in ServiceTrade are part of the Project Management umbrella, allowing Premium and Enterprise customers to better manage cost expectations for projects or jobs regardless of size through the project's lifecycle or job. Budgets provide better insight into seen and unforeseen changes that can impact a project's or job's bottom line.

This article will walk you through creating, editing, and deleting either type from a job.

You can also create a Job (that Job Mode is set to Project) and Budget directly from a Quote. Click here to learn more.

Prerequisites

• Project Management requires a Premium or Enterprise account with Project Management Role Permissions enabled.

Step 1: Enabling Project Mode and Creating a Budget on a Job

A Job must be set to the Job Mode 'Project', to enable a budget.

All newly created Jobs will default with the Job Mode Project toggle off. To set a Job's Job Mode to Project, follow the instructions below:

1. On a Job Page, click Manage Job.
2. Click the Manage Job as a Project toggle on.
   
   • Note: If you cannot access this feature, the toggle will be greyed out or not present, and you cannot click to toggle on. If a Job is a Project and has an existing budget, you will also be unable to toggle off this feature.
     
     
3. Enter any other relevant information.
4. Click Save when done.

This will automatically enable the ability to create Budgets via the Create Budget button under the Act on this Job menu. It will also add new information, including Start Date, Days Remaining, Percentage Complete, Details Tab, and Performance Tab.

1.  Navigate to the Job Page of a Job you want to create a budget for
2. Click Manage Job
3. Toggle Manage Job with a Budget on 
4. Click Save
   • Under Act on this Job, a new action button called Create Budget has appeared.
5. Click the Create Budget button.
   
   
   • The Budget Page for this job will open in a new tab.
     
6. On the Budget Page, click the +Add New Budget button.
   
   • This will open the Budget Type Selection section.
7. Continue to the next Step.

Step 2: Selecting High-Level Budget or Granular Level Budget Type

On the Budget Type Section, you are provided two types of Budgets to select from with examples:

• High-Level Budget organizes your budget at the cost code level. You can break down your budget into item types: your cost codes for a particular project/job (i.e Inspection, Service, Part, Labor, Fee, Material, General Conditions, Equipment, Subcontractor, or Other.)
  
  
• Granular Level Budget organizes your budget on an item-by-item basis. It will pull existing Job Items and Services when you create a Budget from a job into the budget. You can break down your budget into individual detailed items and associate those items' costs to a specific granular service performed on the job. These items can be pulled from your ServiceTrade Items List or added ad hoc.

Creating High-Level Budgets

1. Check the box to the left of the High-Level Budget
2. Click the green Create Budget button
3. Click +Add Budget Item directly under the granular service you would like to add an item to
   • A row will appear where you can now enter the new item information
4. Click the Item Type drop-down box to search and select an Item Type you want to budget
5. Select and enter Estimated Hours (if applicable), Total Budget (your cost), and Estimated Value (your estimated price if applicable)
   • Item Type is the only required field
6. Repeat steps 1-5 until you have added all of your budget items
7. Click the Save button when done

Creating Granular Level Budgets

In this example, we create a granular budget for an HVAC removal and installation job using items from our Items List.

1. Check the box to the left of the Granular Level Budget
2. *optional, but recommended If you have existing Job Items that you want to be added to this budget, check to select the Create budget items from existing job items checkbox.
   
3. Click the green Create Budget button.
4. Click +Add Budget Item directly under the granular service to add an item.
   • A row will appear where you can now enter the new item information.
5. Click the Item drop-down box to search and select an Item from your Items List or type in a custom ad-hoc item.
   • Selecting an Item from your Items List will autofill all applicable information from the Item's List.
6. Select and enter Item Type, Service Line, Quantity, Unit Cost, and Price
   • Unit Cost and Price are the only fields not required to add an item
7. Repeat steps 1-5 until you have added all of your budget items
8. *optional If you want to apply these budget Items to the Job's items, check to select the Apply these changes to Job Items automatically checkbox.
   
9. Click the Save button when done.

Next Steps

Once you have enabled and created your desired budget, you can manage it by following the steps in our Managing a Budget article.

Questions? 

Contact ServiceTrade support at support@servicetrade.com.