Automations can help you with budget delivery and notifications — especially when dealing with large volumes of budgets.
This article explains how to use the Deliver Budget action effectively. We’ll break down triggers, filters, and actions, and at the end, provide a complete example workflow.
📌 Note: To create an automation that targets budgets, the user must have the required permission set for those areas. Without the required permission set, the automation cannot be created or executed. This article is intended for users who already have access to Automations and budgets.
Tip: In many workflows, budgets are delivered only after all billable work has been invoiced, confirming all costs are accounted for before locking the budget.
While this article focuses on automating the Deliver Budget action, invoicing can also be automated separately using dedicated invoice automation flows.
To learn more about automating invoicing, see: Automating Invoice Creation and Automatically Create Invoice Drafts from Recurring Budgets.
Why Should You Automate Delivering Budgets?
Automating delivery is helpful when you want to:
Make sure all budgets get delivered on time
Reduce manual work around reviewing end dates or invoice progress
Get notified when a budget reaches an important milestone
Handle recurring budgets consistently
If you handle many budgets at once, automation ensures no steps get missed.
1) Choosing the Right Trigger
Each automation begins with one of two types of triggers: an action-based trigger or a time-based trigger. Choosing the right trigger that best fits the intended purpose of your automation is one of the most important steps in automation creation because it determines when and how often your automation will run.
Action-Based Trigger
Action-based triggers start only when a budget is created, updated, deleted, or commented on.
Useful when you want to:
Notify stakeholders that a new budget has been created
React to direct changes on a single budget
Validate conditions only on that individual budget before delivering
Limitations:
It does not run on a schedule
It can only target the single budget that triggered it
If no event happens, the automation won’t start
Time-Based Trigger
A time-based trigger executes on a fixed schedule (for example, every Monday at 8 AM). This provides a reliable, predictable workflow.
You can pair time-based triggers with Find Objects to target any budget that meets your conditions. This makes it ideal for bulk delivery.
Useful when you want to:
Target multiple budgets at once
Deliver budgets on a schedule
Ensure the process always runs even if budgets were not modified recently
Limitations:
Starts only at the scheduled time, meaning it can't react as soon as a change happens on a budget.
2) Filtering Budgets (Adding Conditions)
After defining when the automation runs (whether based on an action or on a schedule), you can control which budgets it applies to using filters and conditions.
Budget-Based Filtering (Check if)
With action-based triggers, filtering is done through the Check if action. It applies only to the single budget that triggered the automation.
It can ensure that not all budgets that triggered the automation get targeted by the subsequent actions.
You can filter based on attributes such as:
Owner, company, project
Status, invoiced percentage, end date
Hours used or budget type
It is best used for notifications or conditional actions on individual budgets.
As an example, you can check if the owner of the triggering budget is a specific person or if the triggering budget is set as a recurring one.
Time-Based Filtering (Find Objects)
With a time-based trigger, filtering is done through the Find Objects action. It searches for all objects that meet chosen conditions and then applies subsequent actions to all objects found this way.
Since time-based triggers do not relate to any specific type of object, with Find Objects, we can choose to find Tasks, Invoices, Bookings, etc.
To be able to deliver budgets, use this action to find all budgets that meet your criteria.
Filters are broader and more flexible, including:
Budget, project, or company-level attributes
Time, invoicing, and cost metrics
Recurring status or custom fields
Delivery and invoicing needs
Filtering options are broad and can help you target almost any budget. Some examples include:
Target recurring budgets: Recurring = Yes
Target undelivered budgets whose end date has passed: Needs delivering = Yes
Target budgets based on how invoiced they are (e.g., less than or equal to 60%): Invoiced % ≤ 60
Target budgets with no worked time: Worked time = 0h
3) Performing Actions
Deliver Budget
Use this action to mark budgets as delivered.
Delivering a budget:
Prevents adding new time entries and expenses
Prevents changes to time entries or expenses
Marks it as completed
When setting up the Deliver Budget action:
Choose a budget to which the action applies to — usually only one option will be available unless you have multiple Find Object actions in your automation
Set the delivery date (dynamic date, relative time, or a fixed date)
Example Automation - Deliver Budgets
This example will show you how to set up an automation that will:
Run once a week
Find undelivered budgets that are fully invoiced
Deliver them
Notify stakeholders
Step 1 — Trigger
Use a Time-based trigger.
Set it to run once a week, for example, early morning on Monday.
Step 2 — Find Budgets Ready for Delivery
Add Find Objects → Budgets
Filter for:
Invoiced percentage = 100%
Needs delivering = Yes
These budgets are fully invoiced and ready to be delivered.
📌 Note: Unless you specify, this will target both recurring and non-recurring budgets
Step 3 — Deliver the Budget
• Add Deliver budget
• The budget is now locked and considered complete
📌 Note: When choosing Date delivered, you can use dynamic dates such as the budget end date.
Step 4 — Notify the Budget Owner
• Add comment
• Mention the budget owner and inform them of budget delivery
