Budgets

Budgets brings together proposed costs, recurring services, approvals and future planning. Company users can follow the guides for the access their MSP grants them. MSP staff prepare and maintain plans, manage permissions and help clients review the results.

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Start with a company budget

• Find and open a budget: choose the company, filter the list and open the right plan.
• Read the budget overview: understand metadata, categories, quantities and line statuses.
• Read Monthly Breakdown: follow scheduled costs, monthly totals and overrides.
• Download or print a budget: PDF, Excel, print preview and selected-budget exports.

The list Total excludes rejected costs. Overview and document totals sum quantity × unit price for all lines, including rejected ones. Monthly Breakdown projects charges across the year. Read the relevant guide before comparing these different totals.

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Create and maintain a plan

Budget editing requires permissions assigned by the MSP. Company users do not grant themselves access.

• Create and edit a company budget: company, fiscal year, details and Save.
• Adjust one month’s amount: immediate saves, zero overrides and restoring the calculation.
• Arrange budget sections: category order in Overview and new PDF/Excel documents.
• Add and edit line items: quantities, prices, categories, recurrence and line approval.
• Import line items from Excel: map columns, resolve errors and review duplicates.
• Copy recurring costs from an earlier budget: inspect the selected source and services.
• Add Planner, goal and product costs: choose the appropriate source and review proposed lines.
• Add Microsoft 365 licensing costs: match purchased seats with catalog prices.

Imports into the editor add proposed rows. Review them and choose Save. Existing line approval and monthly overrides use their own immediate-save controls; the editing guides explain the distinction. Exports read saved records and do not save pending changes. Budget notes are visible in the reader and can appear in PDF and Excel. Write them for everyone who can access the budget.

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Approve and compare actual spend

• Approve and lock a budget: check the plan and understand the permanent baseline lock.
• Track budget Actuals: review synchronized customer invoice spend and matched evidence.
• Resolve Actuals exceptions: investigate and allocate unmatched spend when authorized.

Actuals requires an approved baseline and invoice access. Overall budget status is separate from the status of each line. Approved and Archived budgets are locked; use the documented duplicate/archive workflow when a replacement plan is required. Exporting or printing does not approve a budget.

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Copy or remove a budget

To start from an existing plan, duplicate the budget from its list row … > Duplicate. The copy is created immediately as a Draft. Review every copied line, including lines that were rejected in the original, before approving the replacement. To remove a Draft or Pending Approval budget, follow Delete unwanted draft budgets for single-record, editor and selected-batch confirmation steps. Deletion has no undo. Approved and Archived budgets retain their historical baseline and cannot be deleted; use the approved-budget archive workflow when retiring an approved plan.

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Maintain reusable products

Open Budgets Menu > Products when your role shows the menu. A company view can include company-specific and shared products.

• Find and understand products.
• Create and edit products, including billing recurrence and initial company assignment.
• Bulk edit and delete products.
• Create products from Planner.
• Import and link integration products, an MSP workflow.

Catalog Create, Save and Import actions persist immediately. They do not add lines to a budget or update prices already copied into a budget. The current catalog table does not provide working column filtering, sorting or CSV export.

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Forecast future costs

Select one company and open Budgets Menu > Forecast. Opening the worksheet requires budget editing access; Save and the UI Sync controls require budget management permission.

• Read and adjust a company forecast: base amounts, growth, Include, manual overrides and Save.
• Sync a forecast from budgets or Planner: source rules, category selection and merge strategies.

Forecast is separate from budget approval and Actuals. Check what contributes to its base amounts before treating it as an approved-plan total. Sync changes the proposed worksheet; Save persists the forecast rules.

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Navigation and availability

Budgets Menu offers All Budgets, Products and Forecast for users with budget editing access. Budget Templates is not currently an available menu workflow. Use an existing budget’s duplicate workflow or the documented imports to start from earlier work. For a single budget, the reader has Overview, Monthly Breakdown and an invoice-permission-dependent Actuals tab. The header … menu provides Help and the available print/export actions. Export PDF and Export Excel produce the saved budget document; they do not export the active Monthly Breakdown or Actuals tab.

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Frequently asked questions