About project budgets

You plan a project budget before any project transactions occur.
For information about the project life cycle, see: About the project life cycle

On the Budget tab of the Project tasks (PM302000) window, you can add, revise, and delete budget lines for any project task that has the In planning status.
A project task can have multiple budget lines. Each budget line has the following:

• An account group, which determines the category of the expenditure or revenue that you expect to incur during the project execution.
• A particular item (that is, a resource) needed to complete the task.
  You can select an item from the list of items associated with the accounts of the specified account group.
  However, if you want the budget line to include the budget for all transactions associated with the selected account group that are not linked to any particular item, you can select <OTHER> in the Item ID column for the particular budget line.

Other information that you can specify in a budget line includes the budgeted quantity of the selected item, the rate, and the total budgeted amount, which is calculated automatically as the budgeted quantity multiplied by rate if you have not specified a value manually.

You can modify the data in a budget line until you change the status of the project task to Active; after that, you can specify only a revised amount and quantity in the budget line.

The system allows the modification of original budgeted totals for tasks with all statuses (not just In planning), so you need to be careful about how you manage project budgets. (For instance: You may want to restrict access to the project budget data by configuring a restriction group in the Row-level security workspace so that only authorised employees can modify budget lines.

In Visma Net, you can also use other windows, in addition to the Project tasks (PM302000) window, to enter, track, or revise a project budget.
The windows, which include the same budget data but a different level of detail, include the following:

• Projects (PM301000) window:
  On the Balances tab of this window, the most general information about project budgets is displayed.
  The information, which contains the details of all the project-related tasks regardless of their status, is broken down into budget lines by account group.
  On this tab, you can view only the original budgeted amounts, the revised budgets, and the actual budgets calculated based on the project-related transactions that involve the specified account group; you cannot add, delete, or modify budget lines by using this window.

• In the Projects (PM301000) and the Project tasks (PM302000) windows, you can use the Auto-budget action to automatically calculate an estimate of future revenue that will be added as a separate budget line for an account group with the Income type.
  For the calculation to be accurate, the project budget for the expenses, the involved account groups, and the allocation rules must be properly configured.

• If you want to track the costs of the budget planning activities, you can add an employee task to the related project or project task by using the Activity history tab in the Projects (PM301000) or the Project tasks (PM302000) window, respectively.
  However, transactions generated for a completed task cannot be released until the project gets the Active status.

• In some cases (for instance, if project data has been modified through external tools or import scenarios), you may need to recalculate the project balances to bring them in line with the underlying transactions.
  You use the Validate project balances (PM504000) window for recalculating the balances for the selected projects.

For each active project or project task, you can review the budget at any time and decide whether you need to revise it or to adjust expenditures.

For tracking a budget, you can use any of the following windows, depending on the level of detail at which you want to view the budget information: Projects (PM301000), or Project tasks (PM302000).
Also, you can run the Project balance (PM40102S) report, which shows the balances of all projects that are active during the selected financial period.

In Visma Net, account groups are used for aggregation of the information related to project budgets.
An account group includes general ledger accounts of a particular type to which project-related transactions are posted.
As the project progresses, actual amounts are calculated for each budget line based on the posted transactions; you can track the actual amounts and compare them to the budgeted amounts when reviewing the budget.

Because there is no way to assign a purchase invoice line for a landed cost to any project task, the purchase price variance amount calculated as the difference between the landed cost specified in the purchase receipt and the landed cost specified in the purchase invoice is not reflected in the project expenses.

Also, you can track the actual quantities of the items included in the budget.

An actual quantity is calculated automatically if the following conditions are met:

• The budget was specified for the project or project task before any project-related transaction occurred.
• Units of measure were specified for the items before the project was activated.
• The same unit of measure is used for all items that were used in the transactions posted to the accounts included in a particular account group.
• The transactions have been released and posted.

In some cases you may want to revise the budget.
The original budgeted amounts and quantities should always remain unchanged so that you can later analyse the accuracy of your original estimates.
You enter a revised amount or revised quantity for each budget line in a separate column labelled Revised amount or Revised qty.

The actual progress of the task, which is displayed in the Performance column on the Budget tab of the Project tasks (PM302000) window, is calculated as a ratio (expressed as a percentage) of the actual amount to the revised budget amount.
Also, the system uses the revised values for calculation of the task completion percentage if Budgeted quantity or Budgeted amount is selected for the task in the Completion calculation method field on the General settings tab of the Project tasks (PM302000) window.
For more information about how the task completion percentage is calculated, see: About the calculation of task completion percentage