Budgets and alerts

Some projects carry a budget — a number of hours, an amount of money, or both. As time is logged, the project burns through it.

The two alerts

At	What happens
80%	Warning. The project is most of the way through its budget.
100%	Breach. The budget is spent.

Both show as a banner in the app and go to Slack. Whichever is crossed first fires first, and each fires once — you won’t be pinged again every time someone logs an hour.

Hours and money are tracked separately, so a project can be fine on hours and over on cost, or the reverse. That usually means the work is being done by more expensive people than planned.

Budgets warn. They don’t block.

You can always log your time. Going over budget doesn’t lock the project, doesn’t require an approval, and doesn’t stop you saving.

This is deliberate. The alert is information for the people who need to have a conversation with the client — it isn’t a gate, and it isn’t an accusation. Time you worked is a fact, and the timesheet should say what happened.

Don't log somewhere else

The one genuinely damaging response to a budget warning is putting the hours on a different project to keep the number down. That produces an invoice that’s wrong and a history nobody can trust later. Log the time where the work happened, every time.

What you should do

Usually nothing — the project’s owner gets the same alert and it’s their call.

Worth a word with them if you can see the budget won’t hold: you’re closest to the work, and a heads-up before the breach is far more useful than one after.

Projects without budgets

Plenty of projects have no budget set, and fixed-fee projects often don’t have an hours budget at all. Those never alert. Nothing is wrong.