8. Budget

Welcome to step eight of the getting started guide, Budget. If you missed part seven feel to search 7. Schedule.

This guide pertains to creating a budget for your scope elements and any work that needs to be done or tracked within your project.

When you first log in to InScope you will likely land on the projects screen. If you're not already there locate the Projects tab in the top navigation bar as highlighted below.

Once on the projects tab you will land on your list of projects. Select the project you want to work with. This will take you into the project grid view. Go ahead and click the blue + Budget button in the top right as highlighted below.

Now you will see the Add Budget Resource window where you can select and add the a budget resource.

Note: Before you add budget resources you must first set up the company rate table in the system tab settings we reviewed in previous getting started guides.

The first selection you will make is resource Type. The resource type is Equipment, Expense, or Personnel.

The Second selection is resource category within the resource type you selected.

Some Personnel resource categories have employees assigned to them. If you selected personnel as a type and selected a category that has users assigned to it, an Employee selection drop down menu will appear under the category menu and you can optionally choose them as your selected budget resource.

Once you select the category it will auto fill in the rate and unit for the resource you selected. You can also customize the rate or unit here and it will not effect the project rate table or company rate table. Note that the unit for Personnel categories is always "/hour" and can not be changed.

Once you're done setting up your budget resource, hit the green Add Budget Resource to add it to your project. You can always remove it if you no longer need it. You can add as many budget resources as your project needs and the resource can be applied across multiple scope elements.

Now your Budget socket has all the personnel, expenses and equipment resources you just created. All the budget resource amounts start at $0.00.

Next you will enter the budget amounts (or units) for resources you created. To add budget amounts, select the budget resource cell corresponding with the scope element you want to enter a budget for and enter the budget dollar amount and hit enter or click out of the cell for the budget to update.

You can also enter budgets in units and the budget will automatically calculate as the number of units you entered times the budget category unit rate. For Personnel budget categories, you can use the blue and white HOURS COST toggle on the top right of the budget personnel socket. For Expenses and Equipment you can use the blue and white UNITS COST toggle in the top right of the budget expense and equipment sockets.

In the below example we adding a drone budget resource and are highlighting the budget cell for the Location analysis scope element as highlighted below. You can add budget for the drone budget resource in multiple scope elements, so go ahead and add the budget for any other element it applies to.

Once you have your budgets amounts entered for all the scope elements you will see the totals populate on the top of each budget resource column.

Each budget resource type (Personnel, Expenses, and Equipment) is a socket within the budget socket and can be expanded and contracted like all the other sockets. The blue column on the right side of each budget resource type sockets summarizes the the budget by scope element and the top total corresponding with the project name is the total budget for that resource type.

That's it. You now know how to add a budget to your project. We recommend continuing to the next guide, Getting Started Guide 9. Time Sheets to learn more about work entry for users, and how costs are input and monitored within the time sheet section.