When a single project encompasses various work streams, billing models, or service lines, tracking everything under one financial umbrella can get complicated. By enabling multiple budgets within a project, you gain granular control over time tracking, expenses, and team allocations.
Enabling Multi Budgets in a Project
To enable the Multi Budgets feature for your entire account:
Click on your Profile Icon in the navigation sidebar and select Settings.
From the left-hand menu, scroll down and click on Financial management.
Check the box labeled Enable multiple project budgets.
Note: Once enabled, the following changes will occur across your Rocketlane Instance
You can't disable it manually, contact Rocketlane Support
Creating Budget fields
Each budget can have their own individual budget fields associated with them. In order to create a new budget field:
Navigate to Settings and scroll down to the Fields section.
Select Budget Fields.
Click Add new budget field or Add a new section.
Configure the field by assigning a Name and a Type. You can additionally add a description and mark the field as private if necessary
Creating Multi Budgets in a New Project
Go to the Projects Tab, New Project.
Under the Financials tab, select the Multi Budget option.’
Click New Budget, to create the first budget in the project
Enter the Budget name, Status, Billing method, Start date, and End date.
If you select the Billing method as Fixed Fee, you will have to configure Revenue recognition method, Budgeted Hours and Amount
If you select the Billing method as Time & Materials you will have to configure Rate card, Budgeted Hours and Amount.
If you select the Billing method as Subscription, you will have to configure Subscription frequency, Number of periods, Period Budget and Period Hours.
If you select the Billing method as Non Billable, you will have to configure the budgeted hours.
In the next window, proceed to fill the budget fields and Save this budget
Proceed to repeat steps 3 to 5 to add more budgets to the project,
By default, the first budget created is set as the default. This can be changed by clicking the three dots (⋮) next to a budget and selecting the Set as default budget option.
Creating Multi Budgets in an Existing Project
Open the project.
Go to Project Settings.
In the Budget Management section, click Add Budget
For each budget:
Enter a budget name (for example, Discovery, Implementation).
Configure billing type and revenue recognition method.
Set status (for example, proposed, active, completed).
Fill in any custom fields defined for budgets.
All budgets created under the project will use the project’s currency.
Once you have created a budget, you can manage it using the More Actions (three-dot) menu located next to the budget name:
Set as Default: Select this to make a specific budget the primary reference for your project financials.
Check Audit Logs: Select this to view a detailed history of changes and updates made to that budget.
Managing Budgets in Projects
Once you have successfully added budgets to your project, you can configure additional settings for them inside your project.
In Project Settings, navigate to Budget Management, open a budget. You will be presented with a window with 3 tabs:
Managing Budget Details and Custom Fields
Review and update:
Native fields such as name, dates, billing method, status, revenue recognition method, amount and hours.
Custom fields and sections which were configured at the account level
Custom fields can be used to store information such as:
Linked sales order or opportunity identifier
Region or business unit
Any other financial or operational metadata needed at budget level
Additionally you can also link a salesforce object
Adding Team Members to Budgets
In the Team Members section, add the individuals authorized to work against this budget or remove those who should not consume from this budget.
Effects:
Only team members in a budget can be allocated to that budget.
Only those members can track time and record expenses against that budget, when restrictions are enabled.
Removing a member from a budget does not necessarily remove them from the project. Removal from the project happens only when using project level actions.
Linking Revenue Entries to Budgets
In the Revenue Entries section, inside the budget settings, you can recognise revenue against the budget in the same manner you'd recognise revenue for a project. (insert revenue entries doc link)
Linking Tasks and Phases to Budgets
When your project uses more than one budget, you may need to distribute specific tasks or phases across different financial lines. For example, a "Requirements Gathering" task could be tracked under a Discovery budget, while a "User Training" phase draws from a separate Enablement budget. Task and phase level configurations provide the granular control needed to ensure each work item consumes from the correct budget automatically.
To associate a budget:
Open the Project Plan.
Select the specific phase or task you wish to edit.
If editing a task: Navigate to Additional Info in the task window, scroll to Financial Settings, and select the budget or budgets the task should consume from.
If editing a phase: Click Edit Project Phase and select the appropriate budgets.
Save your changes.
This way,
Time tracked against that task or phase uses the selected budget(s).
Expenses linked to that task or phase use the same budget(s).
Auto allocation for that task consumes from the chosen budget(s).
Budget filters in the project plan can be used to focus on items linked to specific budgets.
When you import a template into a project, all phases and tasks are automatically assigned to the project's default budget. You can customize these assignments for individual tasks or phases by following the steps outlined above.
Note: A task does not automatically inherit the budget assigned to its parent phase. This independence allows you to configure specific tasks to draw from a different budget than the phase they belong to.