Budgeting top-down

When you create a budget top-down, you follow this general process:

  1. Enter project budget totals.
  2. Distribute the project budget down to phases, subphases, and resources based on a percentage of the hours, cost, or contract amount.

When you enter hours, Ajera calculates the contract amount based on the project's rate table or from average billing rates entered for the employee type or > Setup > Company > Preferences (if no rates are entered for the employee type). Ajera calculates the cost from the employee’s pay rate or from average cost rates entered for the employee type or > Setup > Company > Preferences (if no rates are entered for the employee type). If you use multi-company, the average and cost rates may be in > Setup > Company > Companies.

If your company sets up templates or uses Ajera's industry-standard templates, your budget may already contain much of the structure and detail that you need.

Quick start with the Top-down template

The quickest way to get started budgeting top-down is to use the standard Ajera template, Top-down. Because the contract amount for phases is based on the total contract amount for the project, this template is set up with standard percentages for the phases.

You simply do the following:

  1. Set up the project, if you have not already done so, using a Top-down template.
  2. Enter the contract amount for the project in the Contract column on the project row.
  3. Click the icon in the % Dist column on the project row.

Ajera automatically distributes the contract amount to lower levels based on their percentages in the % Dist column. If average cost and billing rates are entered in > Setup > Company > Preferences, Ajera calculates average hours for labor contract amounts.

  1. To make any adjustments or further work with your budget, review the instructions that follow.

Building your budget

As you work with your budget, you may perform some or all of these tasks once or repeatedly, perhaps at different times. Here is a typical order for the way you may go about building a budget for the first time:

To

Do this

Open the project
  1. If you are not already working with the project, open it by clicking it in the project list at the top of window.
  2. Click the Manage tab.
  3. If you do not see the type of information you want to work with, select the detail you want to view.

Adjust work breakdown structure
  1. If needed, define the work breakdown structure of your project or make adjustments to it by working with the project tree.
  2. Add resources and add tasks to the project tree, where needed.
Note: If you plan to distribute your totals down to resources, be sure the resources are not mixed in at the same level as any subphases.  

You can choose to roll up task hours to resources or phases, which then updates cost amounts. See Change totals in this topic.

Enter totals
  1. Enter totals on the project row for any or all of the following:

Note:

If average cost and billing rates are entered in > Setup > Company > Preferences, Ajera calculates hours, cost, and contract amounts based on your input for phase budgets. If you have multi-company, the average cost and billing rates may be in > Setup > Company > Companies.
  • Hours/units (if a labor resource has an employee or employee type assigned to it, the budgeted hours and dollars appear in Schedule Manager. You can use Schedule Manager to manage employee schedules by week as the project proceeds)
  • Cost amount
  • Contract amount (required for fee-based projects)
  1. If needed, enter a breakdown of the total for activity types (labor, expense, consultant):
  • Click in the Contract column to show rows for Labor Total, Expense Total, and Consultant Total.
  • Click in the Contract column to hide the rows.

Lock contract totals?
  1. You can instruct Ajera to lock your contract amount totals so that they cannot be changed regardless of any changes you make to the budget for lower- level phases and resources.
  • To allow changes to a contract total, click the locked lock to unlock it.
  • To prevent changes to a contract total, click the unlocked lockto lock it.
Note: When you lock a phase amount, you cannot change any amounts in the % Dist column.

Assign percentages to lower levels
  1. On the row for the phase that you want to budget, in the % Dist column, enter a percentage of the total project amount that applies to this phase.

For example, if the design phase is 25% of the project, enter 25 in the % Dist column for the design phase. Ajera calculates the contract amounts of the phase for you. If average cost and billing rates are entered in > Setup > Company > Preferences, Ajera also calculates hours and cost.

Note: The total of the percentages you enter for the phases must equal 100%. Similarly, when you later enter percentages for the lower levels of each phase, they must equal 100%.
  1. Show or hide the amounts for activity types (Labor, Expense, Consultant), as needed:
  • Click in the Contract column to show the activity type breakdown.
  • Click in the Contract column to hide it.
  1. Repeat this process for each subphase and then each resource that you want to budget for the phase.

About entering hours and rates for resources

Distribute contract amounts
  1. Click the % icon in the % Dist column on the project row.

Ajera automatically distributes the contract amount to lower levels based on their percentages in the % Dist column.

Change totals?
  1. Ajera does not automatically change hours/units, cost, or contract amount totals when you change lower-level amounts. In this way, you can control if and when certain totals change. Instead, when a total no longer equals the sum of its lower level amounts, Ajera displays a plus icon next to the name of the budget item for that total.

Depending on the goal for your budget, do one of the following:

  • Adjust the lower-level items until they equal the total. When a total equals the sum of its lower levels, the plus icon disappears.
  • Change your total so that it equals the sum of the lower levels by clicking the plus icon.

Recalculate cost or contract amounts?
  1. If you change cost or contract amounts that are based on a cost rate or billing rate, or if you later return to working on your budget and employee costs or billing rates have changed, the icon appears. Click it if you want to recalculate all cost and contract amounts for the entire project based on standard rates as set up in Ajera.

Make a budget final?
  1. If your budget is final and you no longer want to allow any changes to it, select the Final budget check box.

When a budget is final, you can no longer change amounts in the budget (unless your project security settings are set to allow changes to the Manage tab); however, you can change schedule and resource assignments. If you locked any contract amounts, they remain locked and cannot be unlocked until you undo the finalizing of the budget.

You can only undo the finalizing of a budget if you have security access to clear the Budget is final check box on the Project Info > Permissions subtab.

Save your work
  1. Click Save.