Multi-budget lets teams manage multiple budgets inside a single project. Instead of forcing all time, expenses, billing, revenue, allocations, and financial tracking into one project-level budget, Rocketlane lets each project contain one or more budgets that can represent different workstreams, billing models, change orders, phases, templates, or service lines.

Once multi-budget is enabled, budget becomes a key financial and operational dimension across Rocketlane. Project financials are aggregated from budgets, time and expenses are tracked against budgets, resource allocations can be planned at the budget level, invoices can be created for selected budgets, billing schedules can be configured per budget, and reports can use budgets as a source.

This article explains what changes across Rocketlane when multi-budget is enabled.

When to Use Multi-Budget

Enable multi-budget when a single project needs more than one financial bucket.

Common examples include:

• A project with both fixed-fee and time-and-materials work
• A project with implementation, training, and support budgets
• A project with change orders that need to be tracked separately
• A project created from multiple templates where each template should consume from a different budget
• A project where different teams, roles, or workstreams need separate budget ownership
• A project that needs separate billing schedules or invoices for different parts of the work

Multi-budget avoids creating separate projects or subprojects just to track financials separately.

Enabling Multi-Budget

Multi-budget is enabled from account settings.

To enable multi-budget:

1. Go to Settings.
2. Open the financial management settings for your account.
3. Enable Multi-budget.
4. Configure budget fields as required.

Once multi-budget is enabled, Rocketlane treats budgets as a core project-level entity. This affects project creation, project financials, time tracking, expenses, resource management, invoicing, billing schedules, reports, automations, APIs, and integrations.

Project Financial Fields Become Read-Only

When multi-budget is enabled, project financial fields are calculated from the budgets inside the project.

This means fields such as project budget amount are no longer updated directly at the project level. Instead, Rocketlane aggregates budget-level values and shows the summed value on the project.

For example, if a project has three budgets:

The project budgeted amount is shown as: $65,000

The project value is calculated from the underlying budgets.

What this means

• Project financial fields become read-only.
• Budget-level values become the source of truth.
• Project-level financials are aggregated from all budgets.
• Updates should be made to the relevant budget, not directly to the project financial field.

Impact on automations and integrations

Any workflow that updates project financial fields directly may stop working after multi-budget is enabled because those fields become read-only.

Review any setup that updates project financial fields through:

• Rocketlane automations
• Salesforce sync
• HubSpot sync
• Workato
• APIs
• Other integration tools

For example, if an automation updates the project budget amount, it will not work after multi-budget is enabled because the project budget amount is calculated from budgets.

Salesforce, HubSpot, APIs, and Workato Changes

When multi-budget is enabled, external systems should no longer update aggregated project financial values directly.

Syncing project financials out of Rocketlane

You can continue syncing project financial values from Rocketlane to Salesforce or HubSpot.

For example, Rocketlane can send the aggregated project budget amount, revenue, or financial metrics to Salesforce or HubSpot for reporting.

Syncing project financials into Rocketlane

If Salesforce, HubSpot, Workato, APIs, or another tool currently updates project financial fields in Rocketlane, that setup must be reviewed. Since project financial fields become read-only, those integrations should be changed to update budget-level values instead, where supported.

Direction of sync

For project-level financial fields, the safe sync direction after multi-budget is:

Rocketlane → External system

If any bidirectional sync currently updates project financial fields in Rocketlane, update the configuration before enabling multi-budget.

Project Creation Changes

Project creation continues to work as usual, but additional budget setup appears during the project creation flow.

When creating a project, Rocketlane allows budgets to be created as part of the setup. These budgets define how work, financials, billing, time, expenses, and allocations are tracked inside the project.

Create multiple budgets during project creation

During project creation:

1. Go to Projects → New Project.
2. Add the basic project information.
3. Select or import the required project templates.
4. Create one or more budgets for the project.
5. Map budgets to the relevant templates, if applicable.
6. Complete project creation.

Mapping templates to budgets

If the project is created using one or more templates, budgets can be mapped to the templates during project creation.

For example:

This ensures that work created from each template consumes from the right budget.

A budget can be associated with one or more templates, depending on how the project is structured.

Default Budget

Every project has a default budget.

The default budget is used when Rocketlane needs to prefill a budget and no more specific budget has been selected.

The default budget is especially useful in places such as:

• Time tracking
• Expenses
• Tasks without a specific budget mapping
• Expense creation where no task or expense budget is selected

For example, if a user creates an expense and does not select a task or expense budget, Rocketlane can prefill the project’s default budget.

Budgets Can Be Created After Project Creation

Budgets are not limited to the project creation flow.

After a project is created, additional budgets can be added later if the project scope changes.

Use this when:

• A change order is approved
• A new workstream is added
• A new phase requires separate financial tracking
• Additional services are added to the project
• The project needs a separate budget for a new billing schedule

Project Settings Changes

When multi-budget is enabled, project settings include budget-related configuration and behavior.

Budget alerts

Budget alerts continue to exist in project settings.

When multi-budget is enabled, budget alerts should be understood at the budget level. This means alerts can help track budget consumption for individual budgets rather than only the project overall.

Use budget alerts to monitor when a budget approaches or crosses defined consumption thresholds.

Project-level rate cards

Projects can still have rate cards configured at the project level.

When multi-budget is enabled, project-level rate card behavior continues to support financial calculations, but budget-level tracking determines where time, expenses, and financial consumption are attributed.

Task and Phase Budget Mapping

When multi-budget is enabled, tasks and phases can be associated with budgets. This determines which budget the work consumes from and helps Rocketlane prefill the budget during time tracking, expenses, and planning.

Task budgets and phase budgets

You can configure which budget a task or phase consumes from.

For example:

This gives teams budget-level visibility into work performed inside the same project.

Multiple budgets on tasks or phases

Tasks and phases can be associated with multiple budgets in cases where work needs to be split or tracked across more than one budget.

However, when a user logs time or creates an expense, the actual time entry or expense is associated with one budget.

Effort Tracking at the Budget Level

When task or phase budgets are configured, effort can be broken down at the budget level.

The task still owns the effort, but the effort can be distributed across budgets.

For example, a task may have 20 hours of effort split across two budgets:

If effort is split equally, Rocketlane can distribute the effort across selected budgets. If a custom split is used, effort must be set at each budget level.

Budget Membership

Budget membership controls who can consume from a budget.

A user can be part of one or more budgets inside a project. Budget membership affects assignment, resource planning, allocations, and, when configured, time tracking.

Assigning tasks with budget membership

To assign a task to a team member, the team member should be part of at least one of the budgets associated with the task.

If a task is mapped to a budget and the assignee is not a member of that budget, Rocketlane warns that the user does not have access to the budget. The user can be added to the budget if they need to work on that task.

For example:

Budget membership and project teams

Budget membership does not replace project membership. A user may be part of the project team and also belong to one or more budgets inside that project.

Budget membership adds a financial and operational layer on top of project membership.

Resource Management Changes

When multi-budget is enabled, resource allocations can be planned at the budget level.

This helps teams understand capacity, planned effort, and staffing by budget instead of only at the overall project level.

Allocations require budget selection

For most allocation types, a budget must be selected.

This allows Rocketlane to attribute planned work to the right budget.

For example:

Replacement behavior

For replacement allocation flows, budget selection is handled based on the user or placeholder being replaced.

For example, if one user replaces another user, the new user inherits the relevant budget associations from the replaced user’s allocations. Similarly, if a placeholder already belongs to specific budgets, the replacement user is added to those budgets as part of the replacement flow.

Time Tracking Changes

When multi-budget is enabled, budget selection becomes mandatory for time entries.

Each time entry is associated with one budget.

This ensures that actual time consumed is tracked against the correct budget.

Budget prefill from task

When a user selects a task while logging time:

• If the task is associated with only one budget, Rocketlane prefills that budget.

• If the task is associated with multiple budgets, the user selects the correct budget.

• The user can change the prefilled budget if required.

Budget membership setting for time tracking

Rocketlane includes a time tracking setting that controls whether users can track time only against budgets they are part of.

When this setting is enabled:

• Users can track time only against budgets where they are budget members.

• Budgets they are not part of are not available for time tracking.

When this setting is disabled:

• Users can track time against any budget in the project, even if they are not a budget member.

This supports use cases where someone contributes a small amount of work to a budget without needing to be formally added as a budget member.

Time entries are single-budget

A time entry can belong to only one budget.

If work needs to be split across multiple budgets, create separate time entries for each budget.

For example:

Do not use one time entry to represent work across multiple budgets.

Expense Changes

When multi-budget is enabled, expenses are also tracked against project budgets.

Each expense is associated with one budget.

Expense budget behavior

When creating an expense budget, select the project budget that the expense budget should consume from.

When an expense is created against that expense budget, Rocketlane automatically uses the mapped project budget.

For example:

Expense creation behavior

When creating an expense:

• If an expense budget is selected, Rocketlane uses the project budget mapped to that expense budget.

• If a task is selected, Rocketlane can prefill the budget based on the task’s budget.

• If neither a task nor expense budget is selected, Rocketlane prefills the project’s default budget.

Expense budget selection is not always mandatory for a project, but the expense still needs to be attributed to a project budget.

Expenses are single-budget

An expense can belong to only one budget.

If a cost needs to be split across budgets, create separate expense entries.

Project Plan Changes

When multi-budget is enabled, the project plan includes budget-based filtering.

This helps teams view only the work associated with a specific budget.

For example, if a project has four budgets, selecting one budget in the budget filter shows only the tasks associated with that budget. Tasks that are not part of the selected budget are hidden from the view.

Budget filtering applies to project plan views such as:

• List view

• Gantt view

Use this to focus on a single workstream or budget without leaving the project.

Project Financials Changes

Project financials change significantly when multi-budget is enabled.

Rocketlane provides:

• An overall project financial dashboard

• Budget-specific financial dashboards

Overall financial dashboard

The overall project dashboard shows the aggregated financials across all budgets in the project.

For example:

The project total is calculated by summing budget-level values.

Budget-specific dashboard

You can switch from the overall project view to individual budget views.

A budget-specific dashboard shows financials for one budget only.

Use this to answer questions such as:

• How much of the implementation budget has been consumed?

• Which budget has the highest margin risk?

• Which budget is over budget?

• Which budget still has unconsumed capacity?

Invoicing Changes

When multi-budget is enabled, invoices can be created for selected budgets.

This works similarly to selecting multiple projects on an invoice, except the selection happens at the budget level within a project.

Choose budgets while creating an invoice

When creating an invoice:

1. Select the project.

2. Choose one or more budgets to invoice.

3. Add invoice line items based on the selected budgets.

4. Review time entries, expenses, or fixed-fee line items.

5. Create the invoice.

An invoice can include multiple budgets.

For example:

Invoice line items and budgets

Invoice line items are associated with the selected budgets.

Time entries and expenses included in an invoice come from the budget they were tracked against.

A time entry or expense can belong to only one budget, but an invoice can include line items from multiple budgets.

Billing Schedule Changes

Billing schedules are configured at the budget level when multi-budget is enabled.

This allows each budget to have its own billing plan.

For example:

Use budget-level billing schedules when different parts of the project need different invoicing timing, triggers, or payment structures.

Budget Automations

Multi-budget introduces budget-related automation triggers and conditions.

Automations can be built around budget events and budget consumption.

Budget triggers

Budget automation triggers can include:

• Budget created

• Budget updated

• Budget deleted

Budget-based conditions

Automations can use budget conditions such as budget consumption percentage.

For example:

When budget consumption is greater than 100%, create a follow-up action.

Use budget automations to:

• Notify project owners when a budget crosses a threshold

• Create follow-up tasks when a budget is over-consumed

• Trigger approval workflows for additional budget

• Alert finance or delivery leaders about budget risk

RBAC Changes

Multi-budget introduces budget-related permissions.

Budget access and actions are governed by role-based access control. Depending on a user’s role and permissions, they may be able to:

• View budgets

• Create budgets

• Edit budgets

• Delete budgets

• Manage budget membership

• Configure budget fields

• Use budget-level financial information

Review RBAC settings before enabling multi-budget to ensure the right teams can manage budgets.

Suggested access model:

Custom Reports Changes

When multi-budget is enabled, budgets become available as a reporting dimension or source.

This means reports can be created to analyze:

• Budgeted amount by budget

• Actuals by budget

• Budget consumption

• Margin by budget

• Time tracked by budget

• Expenses by budget

• Budget status

• Budget owner or budget fields

• Project totals grouped by budget

Budget can be used as a source in custom reports, and budget fields can be selected for reporting.

Example reports:

API and Integration Considerations

Because budgets become the source of truth for financial values, API and integration workflows should be reviewed before enabling multi-budget.

Review any integration that:

• Creates projects

• Updates project financial fields

• Syncs budget amount or revenue data

• Creates invoices

• Creates or updates time entries

• Creates or updates expenses

• Uses financial fields in downstream reporting

• Syncs data to Salesforce, HubSpot, Workato, or other tools

Project creation through integrations

If projects are created through Salesforce, HubSpot, API, or Workato, ensure budget information is passed correctly.

When a project is created through these systems, the budget information should create or populate the default budget.

Financial field sync

Project financial values should generally be treated as output values from Rocketlane after multi-budget is enabled.

Budget-level fields should be used for input and updates.

Key One-to-One and One-to-Many Rules

Multi-budget introduces important relationship rules across the system.

Example: Fixed-Fee Implementation with Change Order

A project has an original fixed-fee implementation budget and later receives a change order.

With multi-budget:

• Implementation tasks consume from the Implementation Budget.

• Change order tasks consume from the Change Order Budget.

• Time entries are logged against the correct budget.

• Expenses are assigned to the relevant budget.

• Financial dashboards show both the overall project and each budget separately.

• The invoice can include only the Change Order Budget when the additional work is ready to bill.

Example: Project Created from Multiple Templates

A project is created using two templates:

• Implementation Template

• Training Template

During project creation, two budgets are created:

• Implementation Budget

• Training Budget

Each template is mapped to the relevant budget.

With this setup:

• Tasks from the Implementation Template consume from the Implementation Budget.

• Tasks from the Training Template consume from the Training Budget.

• Users can filter the project plan by budget.

• Financials can be reviewed separately for implementation and training.

• Billing schedules can be configured separately for each budget.

Summary

When multi-budget is enabled, budgets become the foundation for financial and operational tracking across Rocketlane.

Key changes include:

• Project financial fields become read-only and are aggregated from budgets.

• Project creation includes budget setup and template-to-budget mapping.

• Each project has a default budget.

• Tasks and phases can be associated with budgets.

• Effort can be tracked at the budget level.

• Budget membership controls who can consume from each budget.

• Resource allocations are planned at the budget level.

• Time entries and expenses are associated with one budget.

• Project plan views can be filtered by budget.

• Project financial dashboards support overall and budget-specific views.

• Invoices can include selected budgets.

• Billing schedules are configured at the budget level.

• Budgets become available in automations, RBAC, custom reports, APIs, and integrations.

Before enabling multi-budget, review automations, Salesforce and HubSpot syncs, Workato recipes, API flows, and reporting workflows that update or depend on project financial fields. Once multi-budget is enabled, budget-level data becomes the source of truth, and project-level financials are calculated from the budgets inside the project.