Your Budget total helps you see how the amounts you’ve entered compare with your project budget.
It combines three components:
Items: The sum of Extended Client Price for the applicable budget phase.
Additional Costs: The additional costs included in that phase.
Design Fees: The design fees included in that phase.
Expand the total at the bottom of Budgets to see the breakdown.
Preliminary Total and Working Total
The label changes as your project moves from Preliminary to Working.
Preliminary Total uses your Preliminary Budget values. It helps you estimate the project’s cost to your client before you’ve finished sourcing.
Working Total uses your Working Budget values. It helps you track the project’s cost to your client as you enter pricing for the items you source.
In both phases, the Items amount is the sum of Extended Client Price.
When you move to Working, items created in the Preliminary Budget become placeholders on the Product Board. Their Working pricing stays blank until you specify a product and add its pricing.
If you started with priced products on the Product Board and imported them into the Preliminary Budget, those products keep their pricing when you move to Working. That existing Product Board pricing appears in the Working Budget; it is not cleared.
In both cases, the Preliminary Snapshot preserves the estimate captured when you moved to Working.
Manually entered Additional Costs and Design Fees also carry over. Review those amounts and adjust them if needed.
Why don’t my Area, Schedule, or Type budgets increase the total?
The Budget amounts you enter in Areas, Schedules, and Types are targets for comparing costs within those groups. Entering a target does not add that amount to your Preliminary Total or Working Total.
When comparing a group budget with Allocated, keep in mind that Allocated reflects the items in that Area, Schedule or Type. It does not include tax or freight; those costs are captured separately under Additional Costs. Set the group budget for the item costs you want to compare. If your allowance includes tax or freight, account for those amounts separately when reviewing the comparison.
For example, entering a $20,000 Artwork budget in Types sets a target for artwork. It does not add $20,000 to your project total. The amounts entered for artwork items contribute through the Items total.
To include an allowance in your project total before you’ve identified the individual items, add a line item for it in your budget. For example, add an “Artwork allowance” item and enter pricing so its Extended Client Price reflects the allowance. If it covers multiple Areas, you can distribute it across those Areas. If you haven’t decided where it belongs, use Other temporarily. Check that the combined quantity and pricing reflect the allowance only once.
When you move to Working, the original allowance is preserved in the Preliminary Snapshot. The Preliminary section becomes Estimates, where you can adjust the allowance estimate if you want to, or leave it as a reference while you add and price individual items. Changing an estimate does not change the saved Snapshot.
The allowance’s Preliminary price does not automatically become Working pricing. The individual items you price in Working contribute to the Working Total.
Areas, Schedules, and Types organize the same items in different ways. Adding their targets to the project total would count separate budgets for overlapping groups.
Does Working Total include Actuals from Orders?
Working Total uses your Working Budget values. Actual purchasing costs from Orders are shown separately in Actuals.