Project budgets

A budget lets you cap the effort or cost on a project and watch how close you are getting. You set budgets on a project's Edit page, in the Budget panel. Budgets are configured by managers, admins, and owners; what a member can see depends on a setting described below.

Hours budget

The main budget is an hours cap. Enter a number of Total project hours and Time Trakkr tracks logged hours against it. Leave it blank for no hours cap.

Underneath are two options that shape how the hours budget behaves:

• Budget resets every month — tick this for retainer-style work where the allowance refreshes at the start of each month, rather than being one running total for the life of the project.
• Send email alerts if project exceeds [ ] % of budget — tick this and enter a percentage (for example 80) to be emailed a warning as the project approaches its cap, giving you room to act before you blow through it.

How a monthly budget is measured

A budget that resets every month is measured against one month at a time. The project page opens on the current month, and Previous month / Next month step through the project's history; Return to this month brings you back. You cannot step into the future.

So "Budget remaining" on a 20 hour retainer means remaining this month, not remaining for the life of the project. Stepping back to a month that ran over shows that month over, without affecting the one you are in.

Projects on a fixed budget have no month controls: their budget is one running total, and defaulting them to a single month would hide most of their history.

The hours chart draws a dashed line at a monthly budget and colors any month over it, so a run of overspends is visible at a glance.

On reports, a monthly budget is per month

The Budget vs actual table under Reports and the /reports/project_budget API compare a budget to whatever date range you asked for. For a recurring budget the budget column is still one month's allowance, so a 20 hour retainer over a quarter shows 20 against 60 — a project exactly on plan, not one 40 hours over. Rows like that are labeled budget is per month, and the API returns budget_resets_monthly alongside them.

For a like-for-like figure, either ask about a single calendar month, or read the project page, which does the windowing for you.

Cost budget and expenses

Alongside hours, you can set a Cost budget in dollars to cap what the project costs to deliver. Because cost figures are money, only managers, admins, and owners ever see this.

Directly below it is Include expenses in cost budget. Tick it to count billable and reimbursable expenses toward the cost budget as well as labour, so the budget reflects the true cost of the work. This checkbox only becomes available once you have entered a cost budget amount.

Per-person and per-task budget hours

Beyond the project total, you can allocate hours more finely on the same Edit page:

• In the Tasks section, each task has a Budget hrs field, so you can say how many hours a given activity should take.
• In the Team section, each person has their own Budget hrs field, so you can plan how much each individual contributes.

These are hour allocations that sit under the project total; they help you plan and spot when one task or one person is running long.

Choosing who sees the budget

By default, budget progress is visible only to the people who manage the project and to administrators. To open it up, tick Show budget progress to everyone on this project.

When that is on, members assigned to the project see a budget panel too — but an hours-only one. It shows the budget hours, the hours spent, the percentage used, and whether the budget resets each month. It never shows any money: cost budgets, rates, and dollar figures are still withheld from members, matching the money rules in roles and permissions. This lets you keep your team aware of how much time is left without exposing what the work is worth.

Putting it together

A typical setup is a Total project hours cap with Send email alerts turned on at 80%, and Show budget progress to everyone enabled so the team can pace themselves. For retainers, add Budget resets every month. For cost-sensitive work, add a Cost budget and, if expenses matter, Include expenses in cost budget. Budgets sit on top of the project's billing type, so you can combine, say, person rates with a monthly hours cap.