To help you control the costs of your project scope and selections, Budgets can be used to impose limits. These spending guidelines will give you guidance as you build and edit project scope and make selections to help you stay within budget. While sourcing products for an item in the Library, the item you're sourcing for is shown and also the budget for the room, giving you guidance about what you can afford to select.
You can choose to either allocate budget towards rooms (if you're working on a room-by-room basis) or on categories (such as Plumbing, Electrical, Furniture) which is more typical on a full-house remodel.
1. When starting a new project, you can enter a project budget and a budget for each location (or category)
These budgets represent your client's desired maximum spending on the overall project and for each bucket. Any money not allocated will be reserved for "everywhere else" in the project.
2. After the project is created, see total budget consumption in the Grand Total
This shows how much of the project budget has been scoped out. The allocation is the sum of all items' estimated costs (or, if they have approved selections, the cost of those selections). When you add scope or your client makes selections that are more expensive, the budget consumption will increase. This Budget Meter will visually guide you and your client about how much has been used up.
3. To adjust the project budget, hover over the Budget Meter and click "Edit Budget"
4. You'll see a screen for managing the project budget
In this dialog, you can see the budget for each room or category in the project and also the total budget for the project.
5. To see your budget usage, hover over the Budget Meter next to the total
6. To see a breakdown of the budget usage, click "See Breakdown"
This will show you each item in the room and how much of the budget has been reserved for it. The item's budgeted amount includes the price as well as any sales tax you must collect from the client, representing their "all in" spending for the item.
7. The dialog shows a table of each item, its estimated total cost, and if it's over/under due to a selection
Selecting a higher-end finish than originally estimated causes the item to consume more of the budget. In this table you'll see how much has been allocated for each item and whether the approved selection is over (or under) its individual budget.
