Skip to main content
Beebole’s budgets let you set targets for billing, costs, or hours on your projects and subprojects, and track progress against those targets in real time. Budgets help you spot overruns before they become problems.
Budgets are not included in every Beebole plan. Review your plan and add-ons on the Subscription page.

Assigning a budget to a project in Beebole

​
Budget targets: time, billing, and cost

Each budget on a project has three target fields: You can use any combination of these on the same budget — fields you leave empty simply aren’t tracked. The Time target is stated in the unit you pick next to the field — Hours or Days — and your last choice becomes the default for the next budget. Days are measured against each person’s work schedule, so a day always means one person’s scheduled day.
Beebole budget card of the Web Portal project with the unit picker next to the 180 Time target open, offering Hours, checked, and Days

The unit picker next to a budget's Time target

​
Setting up a budget

1

Open the project

Navigate to Projects and click the project you want to budget.
2

Open the Budgets panel

In the project’s detail panel, open the Budgets panel.
3

Add a budget

Click Add. Beebole creates the budget and opens it for editing.
4

Define the targets

Enter your targets in Time, Billing amount, and Cost amount. Changes are saved automatically, and Beebole starts tracking progress against the budget immediately.
5

Set its From date (optional)

A new budget’s From date is set to the day you create it. Change From to date it another day, or clear it to read From the start. The Budget Status report does not use this date: it compares a project’s budgets with everything ever logged on the project. The date positions the budget in the Planned vs. Real report, where its ceiling starts on its From date.
Beebole Budgets panel of the Web Portal project with a budget card open, showing the From date, the Type set to No split, a Time target of 180 h, a Billing amount of $30,000.00, a Cost amount of $9,000.00 and an empty Notes field

A budget card opened in a project's Budgets panel

Each budget can also hold free-text Notes — a purchase order number or the agreement with the customer, for example — shown on the budget’s card. The Budgets panel and the Budget Status report need the Project budgets permission on your role. The Billing amount and Cost amount fields appear only when your role can also see Billing rates and Costs.

​
Several budgets over time

A project can hold more than one budget: click Add again to create the next one. The panel lists them in chronological order. In the Budget Status report, a project’s budgets add up into a single target, measured against all the time and expenses logged on the project, so a renewal raises the ceiling rather than starting a new count. In the Planned vs. Real report, each budget adds its ceiling from its own From date. To start from an existing budget, open it and click Duplicate. Beebole adds an exact copy, with the same From date, targets, split, and Notes, for you to adjust. To reuse a project’s budgets on another project, click Copy next to Add in its Budgets panel, open the other project, and click Paste. The pasted budgets replace the ones that project held.
Beebole Budgets panel of the Web Portal project with two budgets in date order: one from Sep 29, 2026 with Time 180h and Billing amount $30,000.00, and one from Jan 01, 2027 with Time 200h, Billing amount $36,000.00 and the note Renewal for 2027

A project budget from September 29, and its renewal from January 1

​
Budget splits

For more detailed tracking, you can split a budget using its Type field:
  • Split by person — Allocate a portion of the budget to each team member, with its own time, billing amount, and cost amount.
  • Split by project — Distribute the budget across projects from another category — for example, splitting a client’s budget across activities.
  • No split — One set of targets applies to the whole project.
Beebole Budgets panel of the Web Portal project with a budget card open, the Type set to Split by person, and two allocations: Elena Rossi with 100 h, $17,000.00 billing and $5,000.00 cost, and Lucas Bernard with 80 h, $13,000.00 billing and $4,000.00 cost

A budget split by person: each person gets their own time, billing amount, and cost amount

Budget splits let you see not just whether the overall project is on track, but whether individual contributors or work streams are within their allocation.

​
Monitoring budgets

Click Reports in the sidebar, then Budget Status, to track every budget in one place. The report shows a progress bar per project comparing the hours, billing, and cost actually logged against your targets, rolls subproject activity up the hierarchy, and flags budgets that are at risk or over budget. See Reports for the report’s filters and export options.
Beebole Budget Status report with one row per budgeted project, each showing Time, Billing and Costs progress bars against the target: over-budget bars in red, at-risk bars in yellow, the remaining amount and percentage on the right, and the All, > 80% and Over budget filters above the list

The Budget Status report with time, billing and cost bars for each project

The report is also where a budget in trouble surfaces on its own: the status filter narrows the list to projects above the at-risk threshold (> 80%) or Over budget, and the striped forecast bar shows the planned effort still to come, so an overrun is visible before the actuals get there. Beebole tracks consumption in real time, but never blocks a time entry because a budget is exceeded — watching the report is how you catch an overrun in time to act.
Budget notifications are not available yet: there is no setting in the app to switch them on, so nobody is alerted by email when a budget passes a threshold. Watch the Budget Status report instead — it always flags projects that are approaching or over their budget, with nothing to configure.

​
Related content

Projects

Create and configure the projects where budgets are set and tracked.

Cost rates

Define cost rates that feed into cost budget calculations.

Reports

Read the Budget Status report, and filter, sort, or export budget progress.

Billing rates

Configure billing rates used in billing budget tracking.

​
Frequently asked questions

No. In Beebole, budgets are set on individual projects or subprojects. The Budget Status report rolls subproject consumption up the project hierarchy for a higher-level view.
Not by email today: Beebole has no setting to turn budget alert emails on. The Budget Status report is where at-risk and over-budget projects are flagged, and it always shows them with no setting to configure.
Yes. You can update a budget’s targets in Beebole at any time. Changes are saved automatically, and the Budget Status report immediately measures all consumption against the new target.
Yes. Expenses count alongside time: an expense’s amount adds to the budget’s cost, and its billed amount to the budget’s billing. Only expense types that hold an amount in a currency count; expenses of a type that tracks a plain quantity add nothing to a Beebole budget. See Expenses.
Yes. Each budget’s Time target has a unit picker — choose Hours or Days per budget, and Beebole remembers your last choice for the next one. Days are measured against each person’s work schedule, and the Budget Status report shows every budget in the unit it was stated in.