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Budget Overview

Learn how to track changes in costs, margins, customer price, and invoiced amounts throughout your project.

The Budget displays a holistic view of financial data from your project. Budget data is imported into a table from several financial areas across your project, including estimates, approval documents, invoices, bills and if integrated, Quickbooks Online. It can be customized and shared with homeowners. 

Key Benefits

๐Ÿ“Š Budgets are created automatically from your estimate

๐Ÿ’ฐ Track actual costs against estimates in real time

๐Ÿ“‰ Catch overages early before they turn into profit killers

๐Ÿงพ Stay ready for billing, change orders, and client questions with clean financial data

๐Ÿ Finish projects with confidence knowing exactly where you landed financially

 

****2/25 notes: reorganize section one to show a pic of each budget section. Below have the customization options.

Add section about cost codes, or link to 

Change chapter names. so bad. How about using the Budget, maybe add one about actions (enter bill, invoice, sync qb


Table of contents

  1. Navigation and layout
  2. Data Fields
  3. How data updates
  4. Permissions and sharing

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Navigation and Layout

The budget can be accessed from the left menu from within any project.

Budget - location1

Organizing Costs: Two views

The budget page can display costs in two ways: 

  1. Organized by Cost items like the estimate.
  2. Organized by Cost Codes, a set of accounting codes (e.g. NAHB, 16 divisions, etc.) which may or may not match how the estimate is organized.

Access Project Details - Financials to change this Setting.

Budget - cost item

๐Ÿšจ Cost Codes are recommended, as well as REQUIRED for Quickbooks integration.

Cost Item Example Budget - Cost item example-1

Cost Code Example

Budget - Cost code example

Customizing Column headers

The budget is organized into four sections:

  1. Budget (Green) - Displays hard costs
  2. Profit Summary (Blue)- Displays markups
  3. Price Summary (Light Purple)- Displays customer prices
  4. Invoiced Summary (Light Purple)- Displays collected and outstanding amounts from client invoices

Drag sections and column headers to change their position.

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Select the Column Picker or to add or remove columns.

Screenshot 2026-01-07 at 9.37.29 AM

TIP: Use the More button below the Column Picker to RESET your columns to the default settings.


Customer View Column Picker

You can share select budget details with clients using the Customer View column picker. To learn more, scroll down to the section title Sharing the Budget with Clients.

โš ๏ธ The 'Customer View' panel is only available for cost-plus projects

Screenshot 2026-01-07 at 9.49.58 AM

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Budget Data fields

The budget displays data across many different cost areas. Learn what data each column contains by hovering over the column header.

Budget column picker1

Original Builder Cost when Estimate is locked
Approved Latest Builder Cost including approved Change orders and selections
Revised Latest Builder Cost including approved and pending Change orders and selections
Committed Total Cost of Released and Approved Purchase Orders
All Actuals All draft, approved, and paid bills and expenses
Applied Actuals Approved and paid bills and expenses
Work Completed % of work completed. Manually entered.
Completion Status Mark expense progress. Updates Projected calculation
Collected Sum of paid invoice items
Projected Highest value of Original, Approved, Revised, Committed, or Actual. Unless Completion Status = Paid. Then Projected = Actual
Projected - Original The difference between Projected and Original
Cost to Complete The difference between Projected and Actual. Unless Expense Status = Paid. Then Cost to Complete = $0.
Markup % markup applied for builder profit
Price / sq. ft Price / total sq. ft of project (Total sq. ft of project must be entered in Project Details).
Internal Notes An area to enter budget notes.

 


View Summary

The Budget Summary provides a breakdown of cost and markups in several key financial areas:

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Original Price Baseline price from contractual agreement.
Approved Changes Price changes from approved selections or change orders.
Approved Price Updated price after approved changes.
Pending Changes Price changes that are pending customer approval.
Actual Adjustments Price adjustments from actual bills and expenses. Actual adjustments = projected price - approved price - pending changes
Projected Price Real-time projected price for the customer with approved, pending, and actual changes.
Collected Amounts Real-time amounts collected through customer invoices.

 


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How to update financial data

As project costs change over time, your budget will update based on the creation/integration of expenses (bills), invoices, and approval documents.

Some column data, like Completion Status, Work Completed, and Internal Notes, can be updated on the page. Others are pulled from other areas of Ressio.

Learn how to update these columns below.

 


Original Budget

Go to the Estimate page.

Locking the Estimate will populate the Original column with the builder cost from your estimate.

Estimate lock

TIP: Lock the Estimate when the contract is signed.


Approved/Revised

When Change orders and Selections are created, approved, or declined, the Approved and/or the Revised column data will update. 

Estimate zoom1

Go to the Estimate to create these, and manage them in Approvals.

Approvals


Committed

Create a Purchase Order to update the Committed column.

Purchase Orders can be created on the Estimate page.

Budget - create Po


Applied Actuals

Actuals are project expenses. They can be material expenses, labor costs, or invoices from subs and suppliers.

These expenses can be created in Ressio, or synced from Quickbooks online.

Bills/Quickbooks 

Bills are project expenses in the form of invoices and receipts.

Budget - bills1

Labor

Many builders incur labor costs as well. Along with bills, these labor costs can be tracked as Time Charges.

Budget - time charges


Invoice Summary

The Invoice Summary section of the budget includes columns such as Cooected, Invoiced, Outstanding and Balance Remaining.

Data in these columns can be updated by creating, releasing, and marking as paid Invoices in Ressio.

Screenshot 2026-01-15 171445


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Permissions and Sharing

The budget can be kept private for you and/or members of your team, or parts of it can be shared with clients.

Team member permissions

Budgets can be withheld from team members in two ways:

  1. Users with the role of Team Member or Field User can be added to and removed from projects.
  2. Field users are unable to view financial information in projects.

Sharing the budget with clients

At a minimum, Ressio will share the starting and current price with the client. This is done by locking the estimate when the contract is signed.

Budget - client

There are a few settings in Project settings -> Customer -> Budget that control how much of the budget a client can see.

Fixed Price Project

Screenshot 2026-01-07 at 9.20.39 AM

Cost-Plus Project

Screenshot 2026-01-07 at 9.24.14 AM

Budget projections: Toggle on to include cost summaries for Pending Changes, Remaining Payments, Actual Adjustments, and Projected Price. These are pulled from the View Summary section

Budget Table: To show a clearer view of the budget table in the client portal, you must have 'View table' toggle ON. 


Screenshot 2026-01-07 at 3.44.20 PM


Budget Column Visibility

On cost-plus projects after adjusting budget settings you can now configure client column right on the Budget Page. 

  1. Navigate to the 'Budget Page' on your project and on the right hand side, you will find the 'Customer View' panel underneath 'Columns'.
  2. Click on the 'Customer View' and a drawer will pop out. 
  3. You can:
    1. Select or deselect which budget columns clients can view for this job.

    2. Import visibility settings from templates or previous projects for efficiency.

Screenshot 2026-01-07 at 3.51.04 PM

     4.  Hit 'Save' to put in action.

     5.  Once you save, you can also then hit 'Preview' , to view what the client will see on      their end. It is the same view as what you would see clicking on the ๐Ÿ‘๏ธ on the top left of your project.

Screenshot 2026-01-07 at 4.00.54 PM

Customer Portal View


Budget Table Actuals modal: Toggle on to allow clients to view the individual expenses that make up each budget row.

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Change Log: toggle on to show a summary of Change Orders and Selections and their impact on the current price.

Budget - client2


Exporting the budget

The budget can also be shared by exporting to a spreadsheet.

To export, right-click anywhere in the budget and choose Export.

Budget Export

TIP: Exported budgets can be shared with banks for draws or with clients outside of Ressio.


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If these settings appear to be correct, and you are still having difficulty, please contact support@ressiosoftware.com.