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How to use a cost-based budget

Nutcache Team avatar
Written by Nutcache Team
Updated over 9 months ago

A budget based on costs

Use this option to set and manage a budget based on the costs involved in the completion of a project.

Budget type - Global (costs):

This field allows you to set the maximum cost you want to allocate to the budget. It is by referring to this amount that progress alerts will be triggered based on thresholds (percentage) that you have defined.

Budget type - Per task list:

If you choose this budget type, you will need to set a different calculation method for each of your task lists:

Budget type - Per category:

To use this type of budget, you'll first need to create categories.

1) Go to the Expenses (1) module in the left-hand menu, click on the Categories tab (2) and add (or edit) Expense categories (3). Make sure the categories you want to use in your budget are set up as Active.

2) Once your categories are set up, you can go to your project inside the Project’s module (4) from the left menu, select one of your projects, click on the the Budget tab (5), select Costs (6) and then, select Per category (7) in the Budget type drop-down menu. Then, click on the Set category budget (8) button to assign a budget for each of the expense categories you want to monitor.

NOTE: the Labor category does not exist in the Expenses module. It concerns the costs related to the worked hours your employees have spent on the project. This Labor cost is calculated by considering the worked hours of your employees linked to this project and their specific cost rates.

3) Once the budgets are set, you can monitor their progress in the grid at the bottom of the screen.

4) As you might want to be aware when you reach a certain percentage of the budget you’ve assigned to a category, you have the possibility to set up alerts. To proceed, expand the Alerts grid and click the + Alert button.

5) It will trigger the pop-up where you will be able to set up the alerts you need. Once an alert is reached, you will be notified!

To learn how to read the key performance indicators or how to create budget alerts, please refer to the articleHow to set up a budget and alerts for a project.

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