Metric.ai allows you to manage a project’s budget and billing on one page. You can set a budget using both Hours and Revenue to help you track a project’s progress. The Budget Page contains three sections:
- Total Cards - displays the actuals vs. budget.
- Burndown Chart - visualizes the real-time progress of a project and the forecast.
- Budget Sheet - offers a flexible tool for budget and billing management.
Total Cards
Total Cards presents you with a summary of a project’s current progress.You can compare the actuals vs. budget using both Hours and Revenue. When you hover over a card, you’ll see the following details:
- Billable - amount of hours logged to the billable tasks within budget.
- Internal - amount of hours logged to the internal tasks.
- Overage - amount of hours logged to the billable tasks over budget.
- Remaining - amount of budgeted hours that remain outstanding.
The left column shows the actuals by today based on logged hours.
The right column shows the forecasts at the end of a project based on planned allocations.
In the example below, you can see the project is currently on budget based on the logged hours for today. However, the project budget will be exceeded by 236 hours by Dec. 31st based on future planning allocations. The card has a warning badge to notify the user about this issue.
Budget Burndown Chart
The Budget Chart visualizes both the real-time progress of a project and the forecast. You can view the chart to monitor both the Hours and Revenue of a project. The portion of the chart before “Today” is taken from the time entries or fees in the past, while the portion of the chart after “Today” is taken from the planning allocations or fees in the future. Utilizing this chart, you can easily identify when your project budget overruns.
You can hover over a bar to see the details for a select period:
- Billable - amount of hours logged to the billable tasks within budget.
- Internal - amount of hours logged to the internal tasks.
- Overage - amount of hours logged to the billable tasks over budget.
- Remaining - amount of budgeted hours that remain outstanding.
Budget Sheet
The functionality of the Budget Sheet is defined by the selected budget template. The templates are fully customizable.
*Simply contact support@metric.ai to create a customized template for your organization. In the future, the configuration of templates will be available for organization admins.
The Budget Sheet is a flexible tool to set your budget and billing in the most simple to the most complex scenarios. You can set only the general bill rate and amount of total budgeted hours, or set the multilevel decomposition of your budget, depending on the complexity with which you want to budget the project.
In the example below, the project budget is broken down by role. It allows you to set different rates and different budgets per role.
Using View, you can see the actuals with distribution by role. This sheet shows that the project manager spent more time than was originally budgeted.
You can see more details by hovering over the row. In this example, the project manager has logged 36h over the budget. The Overage Rate is the bill rate that applies to overage hours. You can set the zero rate if you don't want overage hours to bill and produce revenue, or set a specific rate in order to bill and produce revenue.
You also can see that there are hours logged by employees in other roles. These hours go to Internal (if logged to internal tasks) or Overage (if logged to billable tasks) since there is no budget for these hours.
However, you can set the budget for other roles if needed.
You can also break down the budget by different categories. For example, the "Developer - iOS" role can have a different rate set per different time periods.
You can break down any of the budget columns. For example, set unique budgets per different time periods for each role.
Billing Types
A budget template can have one or several Billing Types, which you can pick and choose for each row.
Time & Material
If a customer is charged by time and material, this option allows you to bill by the hour at specific hourly rates. The more hours you work, the more you charge.
- Billing - input hourly bill rate for time and material projects.
- Budget (h) - input the budget.
- Overage Rate - input hourly bill rate that will apply to hours over budget. You can set a rate of zero if you don't want overage hours to bill and produce revenue, or set a specific rate to bill and produce revenue.
- Cap - input the Time Amount Cap that limits your revenue. In the example above, the revenue for 2021 is limited by $100,000, and the revenue for 2022 is limited by $250,000. The hours over the cap will not produce revenue.
- Description - input a description of the budget row.
*all fields can be disabled or enabled in the template.
Fixed Fee
Utilize a Fixed Fee when the project price is fixed, regardless of how many hours are worked (e.g., $100,000 to build a mobile application).
- Billing - input fee amount for fixed fee projects.
- Fee Date - set a date for the fee, which is helpful for invoicing.
- Budget (h) - input the budget.
*can be disabled or enabled in template. - Overage Rate - input hourly bill rate that will apply to hours over budget. You can set a rate of zero if you don't want overage hours to bill and produce revenue, or set a specific rate to bill and produce revenue.
*can be disabled or enabled in template. - Description - input a description of the budget row These descriptions can be used in the invoicing.
*can be disabled or enabled in template. - Fee - input one fee or break it down into several fees to provide more detailed invoicing.
Retainer
Use this option for projects under retainer contracts like SLA. Break down fixed payments per month, quarter, or year (e.g., $10,000 per month).
- Billing - input fee amount per period (e.g., month, quarter, year).
- Retainer Start - set the start date of the retainer
*required. - Retainer End- set the end date of the retainer
*optional, the end of next year will be used by default. - Budget (h) - input the budget per period.
*can be disabled or enabled in a template. - Overage Rate - input hourly bill rate that will apply to hours over budget. You can set a rate of zero if you don't want overage hours to bill and produce revenue, or set a specific rate to bill and produce revenue.
*can be disabled or enabled in a template. - Description - input a description of the budget row.
*can be disabled or enabled in a template.