Project budgets are made up of combinations of Projects, Cost Codes and Cost Types (Accounts). When a project is initially created the Budget Status will default to ‘Not Initiated’ meaning that no budget has been created. Once budget lines are added, users can elect to ‘Submit’ or ‘Submit Later’. Submitting later changes the Budget Status to ‘Draft’, which saves the budget so far but will allow a user to continue editing at a later point. ‘Submit’ saves the budget so far, puts it in ‘Submitted’ Status and does not allow further edits to the budget. Users with the proper security (BlueCollar Global Permissions) however, can change the status from ‘Submitted’ back to ‘Draft’ in order to make necessary edits.
For the full set of budget terms and the status lifecycle, see Project Budget Overview.
Alongside the dollar amounts, the budget grid also supports entering Original Hours, Original Units, and a Description on each line. These feed the budget's Hours and Units columns, which track right alongside the dollar budget — see Project Budget Overview for the full set of columns.
When you need to share the budget or work with it offline, you can export the grid to Excel (including the dollar, hours, and units columns) or to a printable PDF Budget Report.
Importing is valuable when standing up a new project from an estimate or migrating an existing job — you can load an entire budget in one pass rather than entering lines one at a time.
| Column | Required? | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project | Required | The BlueCollar Project Name | Elm Street Office |
| Cost Code | Required | The Cost Code | 03000 - Concrete |
| Cost Type | Required | The GL Account | 50100 - Labor |
| Amount | Required | The budget amount | 125000.00 |
| External ID | Optional | No longer required. Include it only if you want to key the records by external ID (e.g. to update them later) — a common pattern is the Project Name plus a counter, such as Construction Project&1. |
Construction Project&1 |
| Original Hours | Optional | Budgeted hours for the line | 120 |
| Original Units | Optional | Budgeted units for the line | 40 |
Whether Budgets are imported or added manually the Current and Projected Estimate dates will take on the 'Contract Date' from the Project record. If the Contract Date is not populated then the Current and Projected Estimates will be dated as of {today}'s date or the Through Date populated on the Budget UI if adding manually.