The budget captures a growing project as specs are created with quantities and costs are added. Spec quantities and unit costs transfer from your specification setup, additional costs on the project or item level along with markups, deposit amounts and allowances can be set up to present your client with an overall project budget. This pdf will outline how to setup an estimated budget, build an actual budget, capture additional costs and generate budget reports.

This may be included as the first stage of the project setup, before you start specifying products. You can start by setting up shell specs, with a code, description, area and quantity.

There are two ways you can set up your project with shell specs,

1. You can set up all items you will be specifying to create a detailed Proposal or Quote.

2. You can set up on a spec type template for each product grouping, which you can then keep on the budget as a reference. i.e. ‘Seating – Budget’, ‘Lighting – Budget’.

The next step would be to ‘Activate your budget’, if your budget has not been activated, unit costs will not show on the reports. Once this button is selected all active specifications will show along with the quantity and unit cost set up with the spec details.

The unit cost is live in the budget, you can choose to set up the cost on the budget or within the spec pricing tab, these are both linked to show updates, when made either within the spec or on the budget.

Go into the budget and perhaps filter by area, category or spec type, to start adding in estimated costs.

When you are ready to provide your client with an Estimated Quote or Proposal, you can go to the grey reports tab and select the ‘Quote/Invoice Report’.

This report will allow you to show a detailed breakdown of estimated costs per area.

To start setting up this report, first ‘group your specs by’ category, spec type or no grouping, then go to settings to select other setup options, i.e. group specs by area and area type or just area.

Because items have not been specified at this point, you can remove images to just show the estimated cost breakdown. The ‘Totals Summary’ can be shown at the beginning or at the end with your terms and a client signature. Please select within the settings before generating report.

*There is a filter under settings to remove the image box from the report.

Adding Taxes to all items on the budget

· Go to the ‘Add’ drop down menu and select ‘Tax’. You can set up tax as a dollar amount or a percentage and provide a description of what type of tax. The tax will be applied to all specs and also to costs that are marked as taxable.

· You can add multiple ‘Taxes’ to your budget, i.e. Sales Tax, State/Provincial Tax etc.

· If you have a QBO sync set up to your DS account, you can also auto-fill a tax percentage from your QBO setup.

Applying a specific tax percentage to items

· Go to the ‘ADD’ drop down menu and select ‘Item level cost’ then add the tax name and percentage as the description. You can choose to base the tax percentage off the unit cost or sell price, if you choose sell price, make sure the mark up is added to the budget first.

·On the budget tab you can apply the percentage to each item within the set up tax column.

Additional costs to your project can be captured on the item or budget level, each can be added as a percentage or dollar amount.

To set up the cost go to the ‘ADD’ drop down menu and select either Item Level or Budget Level.

All item costs can be set up with a description and a dollar or percentage amount; within the budget tab you can toggle back and forth from $ to % per item. Examples of Item level costs are Shipping, Installation. Each item level cost will show as a column so that you can apply a different cost to each item.

A budget level cost is either a lump sum dollar amount or a percentage applied to either the total cost or the sell price. Each cost can be set up with a description and can be taxable.

This is a great place to capture any item cost information. i.e. Date deposit was captured, currency details.

Project level deposit - A deposit can be added to the budget to capture an amount that is subtracted from the Grant total. You can set up the deposit description with any wording that you choose. Ie. Deposit Due, Deposit paid, Funds Request. This amount can either be setup as a dollar amount to capture a deposit that was paid or a percentage of the budget that is due.

Item level Deposit – If you are capturing deposits applied to individual items, you can add an item level cost to the budget ‘Deposit Paid’, then add a negative percentage or amount to each item.

*This will not include the tax amount. The deposit percentage can be applied to either the unit cost or sell price.

Multiple allowances can be added to the budget from the ADD dropdown, to capture an estimated total for areas of the project that you have not specified yet.

This can be a percentage or dollar amount and can be selected as taxable.

The markup can either be added to the budget on the Item level or the Budget level.

Perhaps for an estimated budget if you know you will be marking up your items, you add a budget level percentage then as you are specifying your items you update the budget to include an item level budget to capture the markup separately for different product categories or vendors.

As you are setting up the item level markup, you can either add in the markup percentage or the sell price. If you know your cost and the sell price, the markup will be calculated for you.

*Please note that if your vendor removes the markup from the sell price instead of applying it to the unit cost, the markup percentage will be different.

Ie. Vendor marks up their product by 30% from your cost to make retail, it will be a different amount from them subtracting 30% from the retail price. $100 + 30% = $130 vs $130 – 30% = $91

The bulk edit button will allow you to apply a percentage or update a cost to multiple items at the same time. You will only be able to bulk edit the Quantity if it is set up as a general quantity.

*Before bulk editing, you may want to use the ‘Area, Spec Type, Vendor or Category’ filters to access specific items for efficiency.

Export all columns from the budget tab or use one of the budget reports on the grey Reports tab, for internal or client facing documentation.

Excel Export

The export will automatically create an excel spreadsheet with all the columns from the budget tab, including the code, description, quantity, item level costs and the budget memo.

*If you are using filters when exporting the budget, only the filtered items will export to excel.

QuickBooks Estimate Export

You can push over an Estimate to QBO, so that you can track client payments and invoice.

This report will allow you to export your budget with a detailed summary of totals along with costs, markups and extended markups on the item level.

The Markup amount will also be shown within the summary, along with other item/budget level costs calculated.

This is the best client facing report to use for Proposals, Quotes, Estimated budgets and invoices. There are several filters available to help you create the report type you are looking for.

If you would like to add a client signature line and your ‘Terms & Conditions’ to the end of this report, go to the pink ‘Budget Setup’.

*If you use the QuickBooks Integration, you can also set up defaults here, for pushing over Estimates.

Project Quote or Proposal

First set up the report name and date under settings. If you have a default header, this will update automatically, if you have added a custom header to this report, make sure you have the ‘Report title and date’ added to the setup.

There is the option to group spec by area type (i.e. Public, Guest, F&B) or just area, this will provide a breakdown of item costs per area within the report summary, which clients really like to see.

Review all filters under settings before generating the report, there are import options that might impact the setup of your report, i.e. show the summary at the end instead of the beginning, add lead time, custom attributes and summary notes.

After reviewing the filters under settings, you can also choose to group specs by spec type, vendor, category or no grouping. General filters are available if you would only like to show a budget with specific items. i.e. FF&E items in the guestrooms.

Once the report has been generated, you can save a report ‘Preset’ to capture the format of the report and then export using the red ‘Download’ button.