Create and manage budgets

Resource Management helps you budget and track projects by time, fees, or expenses.

Who can use this?

Plans:

  • Resource Management

Permissions:

Resourcing Administrators

Find out if this capability is included in Smartsheet Regions or Smartsheet Gov.

Resourcing Administrators can create and manage budgets for an account.

You can find all the budgets in the Project Settings. Go to the project you want to review and select Project Settings.

Time budgets

A time budget is the allocated labor for a project expressed in work hours or days. Your team's hours count against this budget.

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time, fee, and expense budget settings

Fee budgets

The fee budget is the allocated labor for this project expressed in a fee amount. Your team's hours worked, multiplied by their bill rates, weigh against the budget.

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time, fee, and expense budget settings

Expense budgets

Expenses are non-labor-related project costs. Examples of expenses are costs incurred when hiring outside vendors, ordering prototypes, or travel costs. Use Expense categories to estimate costs at the beginning of the project and track incurred expenses for these categories. Expense categories might include travel, materials, or consultants.

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time, fee, and expense budget settings

If project contractors or consultants bill your project a fixed fee for work performed, consider adding that person as an expense rather than project labor. Estimate the fee and then enter the cost of the consultant when you receive the invoice.

Budgeting expenses by category

Use categories to estimate and track specific expenses. You can use predefined categories or create your own. 

When you add a predefined expense category to your budget you will see the suggested cost for that category, or you can use the calculator to set the cost for a category item.

For example, estimate travel expenses for a project using the expense tracking tool or budget the time you anticipate needing for marketing, billable tasks, or meetings using the fee or time tracker.