Setting up a budget ensures the project responsible a better understanding about how the human and financial resources will be used throughout the project's progress. Within Nutcache, the Project screen allows you to track the project as well as the budget from one convenient location.

Before setting up a project budget, you first need to define whether the budget will be based on hours, amounts or costs.

If you choose this budget option, you will need to define the type or scope for your budget.

Global

As its name suggests, a global budget covers the entire project.

Budget (hours)

This field allows you to specify the number of hours you want to allocate to the budget. It is by referring to this number of hours that progress alerts will be triggered based on specific thresholds (percentage) that you have defined.

Per member/service

A per member or per service budget type allows for a more detailed monitoring of your project's activity. Whether by member or by service, you must set a specific budget for each one (in terms of hours) by clicking the Set Member/Service Budget button.

Only calculate billable hours

Select this option if you want the budget to take into account only billable worked hours and not all hours worked.

Once all the budget initial parameters are set and saved, the budget will update as you record time entries, expenses and bill customers; many performance indicators will allow you to track its progress.

The dotted line across the graph shows the budget limit. A red dotted line means the budget threshold has been exceeded.

A Refresh option at the top of the screen can be used to regenerate the graph if you make any changes to worked hours or expenses related to the project.

The project KPIs are divided into 5 categories:

The progress

This performance indicator shows the overall progress of the budget (in percentage terms) according to the parameters previously defined. It also informs you about the budget spent (in hours or amounts) VS the remaining budget.

The hours

This indicator illustrates the difference between the worked hours and the billable hours related to your project.

The costs

The total costs shown are made up of project expenses (e.g. purchase of equipment) and labor costs (salaries).

Billing

This indicator shows the total billable amount related to the project broke down in billed-to-date amount and billing remaining amount.

The profitability

The profitability of a project takes two forms: the actual profitability obtained by the billed-to-date amount VS the total costs; and the projected profitability resulting from the total billable amount VS the total costs.

As for the ratio, a value of "1" represents a project with no loss or profit. All lower values represent a loss-making project. Conversely, any higher values indicate a profitable project.

The members section provides an overview of all members assigned to the project. For each member, you get information about the allocated budget, the billable hourly rate, the hourly cost of each member, the number of hours remaining, the percentage of progress, the labour costs (hourly cost x worked hours) and the billable amounts.

This section contains all the services related to the project. For each of them, you get information about the worked hours, the billable hours and the labor costs (hourly cost x worked hours).

To ensure your project runs smoothly, efficiently, and profitably, you can set different thresholds (in percentage) to monitor the budget's progress. When a budget threshold is met, an alert is triggered and an email is sent to the person of your choice.

Creating an alert

Nutcache allows you to define alerts that will cover the entire project and based either on hours, amounts or costs (Global - hours/amounts/costs) of the project budget. You can also define more specific alerts for members based on their worked hours (Member - hours).

From the pop-up screen, select the alert type you wish to create (global or by member), set the percentage for the threshold to reach, enter a description for your alert, and then specify the recipients who will receive the alert when the threshold is reached.

Nutcache lets you create as many alerts as you need to monitor the budget and project's progress.

In addition to the key performance indicators related to projects, Nutcache includes reports that allow you to monitor the project progress even more closely.