Budget Control

There are several benefits of planning and monitoring a business budget, including being better able to:

• Allocate monetary resources to proper key results and tasks
• Identify possible financial issues and prevent them well in advance
• Manage costs more effectively and reduce unexpected expenses
• Set up only tasks that make your team closer to achieving the objective
• Monitor financial performance to be aware of the current state of affairs

• Not to waste time on useless tasks

A budget forces you to map out your key results, not to waste both time and money on inappropriate tasks, and finally to make your main objective a reality.

With a fixed budget, each step should be scheduled and evaluated. There could be no such thing as This task seems to be very necessary and high-priority. Check if it is so and make sure your team obtains benefits upon this task completion, not loss of time and funds.

• Not to overspend money

Starting any new project with fixed seed money, you should clearly understand no matter how brilliant and highly thought-out your plan is, risks are always a common factor. It means you shouldn’t rely on future income ahead of time and spend any more money.

Stick to your budget and you'll never find your team in a precarious position. Always be aware of your current budget, adequately assess ongoing waste, clearly think out further costs, and do not overspend money.

• To be able to safely maneuver

New unexpected tasks? Additional sprints? It’s all right, if you prepare well in advance, of course. When planning a project budget make sure not to cut it too close. Thus, you can change your plan according to additional details and whatnot.

Having an additional amount of money means staying on the safe side in case something goes wrong. It’s a good practice to budget an additional 10% for unforeseen expenses. However, you shouldn’t get carried away with cost exaggeration, otherwise, your project risks not getting budget approval.

1. First of all, break down your main objective into more concrete key results and set up appropriate tasks to achieve them.
2. Then, estimate each task in the to-do list and calculate the cost of all needed resources, materials, and human assets to complete each key result.
3. After evaluating all outlined tasks, you can calculate the total fast by adding all your estimates together.
4. Budget an additional 10% for unforeseen expenses. It's better to be safe than sorry.
5. Get approval of the final project budget and that’s it!

Note: Objective budget is a must element to get Objective Reports and to calculate the Objective Score.

1. Open task settings and navigate to the Budget option.

2. Set up the planned budget for this task.

Select Hourly Billing to calculate your budget based on the Hourly Rate and Planned Hours. If you choose this option, fill out Hourly Rate and Planned Hours values and select Billing per Team / Member. As a result, the Planned Budget value will be automatically calculated.

Note: Billing per Member means that the Hourly Rate is going to be multiplied by the team members’ quantity.

Or

Leave the Hourly Billing option off and set up Planned Budget value on your own.

3. Planned key result Budget is calculated based on the Planned Budgets of all related tasks. Thus, fill out all tasks that belong to the same key result with the Planned Budget value and figure out the estimated budget to complete this key result.

4. Planned objective Budget is calculated based on the Planned Budgets of all your key results. It means, as far as you estimate the cost for all tasks, you will be able to see your final project budget.

5. Well, planning a budget is only half of the project's success. The next step is monitoring your expenses throughout the whole project implementation and considering the actual budget. Calculate the monetary costs of each task and fill out correspondent values in the task settings menu.

6. As the Actual key result Budget and Actual objective Budget are calculated based on the Actual Budgets of all your tasks and key results respectively, you shouldn't worry about their management. All you have to do is compare a planned project budget with an actual one.