What is a budget?
A budget is the amount of labour time and money you plan to spend on a project. Swift Checkin compares it with what workers actually spend, so you can see early if a project is going over.
What a budget is
- Set up against a project that already exists.
- Made up of a Quantity (the work hours you expect) and a Unit Cost (the hourly rate). Together they give the budgeted amount.
- Also has a name, planned start and end dates, a status (Active, Pending or Completed) and optional opening hours and amount.
- A project can have more than one budget.
Variations (change orders)
- When the work changes after the budget is set, you add a variation. In Swift Checkin these are called Change Orders.
- A change order adds extra hours and money on top of the budget, without changing the original figures.
How actual cost is tracked
- Actual hours come from workers' timesheets on the project.
- Actual spend is worked out from those hours and each worker's pay rate.
Good to know
- You'll find budgets under Finance, then Cost Management, then Budgets. The Budgets feature must be switched on for your organisation.
- Users with the project member role can view budgets and change orders, but can't add, edit or delete them.
- To set one up, see How do I create a budget?