Handbook / The money
Budget and cost codes
The estimate says what the job sells for. The budget says what you have allowed to build it.
Cost codes are the shared language. A code like
06-100 Rough carpentry appears on the estimate line, the
budget line, the purchase order, the crew's hours and the final report,
which is what lets those five things be compared without anybody
mapping between two schemes.
The quickest way to a budget is Build from the estimate: it takes the internal cost of the priced lines, grouped by code, and lays them out as the allowance. Adjust from there.
The four numbers on every code
| Number | What it means | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Budget | What you allowed | Set by you, usually from the estimate |
| Committed | What you have ordered | Issued purchase orders and subcontracts |
| Actual | What has been spent | Hours, vendor invoices, directly bought materials |
| Projected | Where it lands | Actual plus what is still on order |
Cost booked against a code with no budget line still counts. It appears at the bottom marked as unbudgeted rather than being quietly left out of the total - which is the point at which most budget reports stop being trustworthy.
Undoing things
| What happened | The way back |
|---|---|
| Budget set too low | Edit the lines. Nothing downstream breaks; the variance simply changes. |
| Rebuilding from the estimate | Replaces the budget lines. Any figure you had adjusted by hand goes with it. |
| Wrong cost code on a line | Edit the record that carries it - the estimate line, the PO line, the time entry. The reports follow. |
Access: Budget management.