Budgets Module
Budget vs. Actual
Set a spending or income target against a category or a project, and see it compared against your real records — pulled live every time you open the page, never typed in by hand.
Setting a budget
1Create a budget line
Click + New Budget.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Budget Against | A Category or a Project — this choice can’t be changed later, see Changing a budgeted amount. |
| Type | Category budgets only. Expenses or Income — decides which side of your books the category name is matched against. |
| Category | Category budgets only. A free-text field with autocomplete suggestions from categories you’ve already used. It has to match a real category name exactly, or Actual stays $0 — see How Actual is calculated. |
| Project | Project budgets only. Picked from your real Projects list for the active company. |
| Period | Monthly, Quarterly, or Annual. |
| Period Start | Any date inside the month, quarter, or year you’re budgeting for — it snaps to that period’s full first-to-last-day range automatically. |
| Budgeted Amount | Required, must be greater than zero. |
Click Create.
For a category budget, Actual only counts records dated inside the period you set. For a project budget, Actual is that project’s real total cost to date, pulled straight from Projects — Period Start only labels the line, it doesn’t limit which costs are included.
2Read the summary cards
| Card | What it’s measuring |
|---|---|
| Total Budgeted | Sum of every budget line’s Budgeted Amount, for the active company. |
| Total Actual | Sum of every line’s real Actual, computed the same way as each row. |
| % Used | Total Actual as a percentage of Total Budgeted, across all lines combined. |
| Over Budget | How many individual lines are currently Over Budget. |
These four cards sit above the Budget Lines table and always reflect every line you’ve created — there’s no filtering or date range to set.
3How Actual is calculated
Nothing about Actual, Variance, or a line’s health is ever stored — all three are recalculated from your real records the moment you open Budgets, so they can never drift out of sync with what’s actually in your books.
For a category line, Actual is the real income or expense total for that exact category name, within the period’s date range — the same numbers Reports itself would show for that category and period.
For a project line, Actual is the project’s real total cost to date, from Projects’ own cost tracking — see the note above for why the period doesn’t narrow this one.
Variance is Actual minus Budgeted (positive means you’ve gone over). Health is derived from the two — see Budget health reference.
Common tasks
Changing a budgeted amount
Click the edit icon on a budget line’s row.
Once a budget line exists, Budget Against, Type, Category, Project, Period, and Period Start are all locked — the edit form shows them disabled. Only Budgeted Amount can actually be changed and saved. To retarget a line at a different category, project, or period, remove it and create a new one instead.
Removing a budget line
Click the delete icon on the row and confirm the prompt — there’s no undo after that. Removing a budget line only deletes the target you set; it never touches the real income, expense, or project records its Actual was calculated from.
Reference
Budget health reference
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| On Track | Actual is under 85% of Budgeted. |
| At Risk | Actual has reached 85% of Budgeted, but hasn’t gone over. |
| Over Budget | Actual has passed 100% of Budgeted — or the line has a $0 budget and any Actual at all. |
What this module doesn’t do
There’s no picker linking a budget line to a real category record — it’s a free-text field matched against your Income/Expense category names. A typo or a slightly different name means Actual quietly stays $0 instead of erroring.
A line crossing into At Risk or Over Budget only shows up the next time someone opens the Budgets page — it doesn’t fire a bell notification, email, or anything else on its own.
Projects already has its own per-project Budget/Spent tracking. A Budgets project line here sits alongside that, not in place of it — the two aren’t merged into one number.