Overview
The Client Budget tool helps account managers, property managers, or owners with a proposed budget for the coming year for their property for the upcoming year or season, ensuring standardized, forward-looking budget planning for all property related proposals.
This report is not a revenue report, but rather for budget planning. It also serves as a tool for property managers to use during budget necessary conversations; this helps expedite approval of potentially high cost work for their associated properties.
Use of this feature helps enforce continuity for teams so all budgets being shared with customers are sent with a standard in mind.
Invoice types determine the tool’s functionality, including where the data appears on reports and how payments are displayed.
Requirements
To create client budgets, you must have the Edit Properties permission added to your user role. This permission gives you access to the three dot icon when viewing a property.
What’s included in a client budget
If you win a contract opportunity, the amounts will show in the client budget digital preview screen under the Active column. If you reset the opportunity to bidding and make changes to the estimate, those changes will show in the client budget for real time updates made to the client’s opportunities.
Note: If you renew or copy a contract, and the opportunity has not been won, then the renewal amount will appear in the Renewal column on the budget. If there is more than one Contract amount, the renewal column amount will be summed together under this column.
Contracts will not show on this digital preview screen if:
The opportunity has a status of lost.
The start date is before the date set in the Year Beginning field.
For opportunities with a Fixed Payment invoice type, if the payment schedule equals $0.00
Optional Services included in contracts will show in the digital budget even if they have a zero dollar price but can be suppressed for your print layout.
Work orders will not show on this digital preview screen if:
The opportunity has a status of Won
Read the section here for more information on this.
The estimate equals $0.00
Optional Services included in work orders will not show in either the digital preview screen or the printed layouts.
Specific invoice type inclusions on printed layouts
Below is a list of parameters for specific invoice types and what gets included on the printed versions of the client budget.
For Contracts
All fixed payment services will be included in the client budget in both the digital preview screen and the printed layouts.
Per Service services will be included in the total budget on the digital preview screen, but these will be broken out as separate lines on printed layouts.
T&M services will be excluded from both the digital preview screen and the printed layouts.
Contract Optional services can be included on printed layouts.
Proposal Description 1 information will be displayed.
For Work Orders
All work order invoice types display budget information the same in both digital previews and on printed layouts.
Proposal Description 1 information will be displayed.
For more details on the client budget layouts available, read here.
Reviewing a client budget
To review a client budget follow these steps:
Go to the Properties module.
Go to the client’s property.
Select the three-dot icon next to the Save button.
Select the Client Budget option.
On the Client Budget page, you can either print the budget immediately or add a date to the Year Beginning field to view the budget before printing. Keep reading to learn more about both options.
Viewing a client budget on digital preview screen
To view a client budget without printing, select the Year Beginning field and choose a date.
After selecting a date, a section for contracts is displayed, an Optional services section, and then Work Orders listed by their Division.
Note: Select the active or renewal column to visit the Opportunities screen.
Printing a client budget
To print a client budget:
Select the three-dot icon, then select Print.
In the Report Settings window that appears select a Report Layout.
Default layout will show the contracts in each line item, and each month listed. The total amounts listed will show fixed payment amounts for each contract.
Set the Start Date that you want displayed on your exported report.
Set an export type for your budget file.
For more information on adding additional client budget layouts, read our Layout Catalog article.
Understanding the WO by Division section
In the previous section, we mentioned that Work Orders cannot be seen on the client budget after the Work Order is in a status of Won.
This is because the client budget's purpose is to proactively share future budget considerations with your customers.
This means that work that is already won would not continue to be displayed in this report as your customers should have already accounted for this in their budgeting.
Excluding estimates from the client budget
When estimating opportunities for your customer, by default, Aspire includes the opportunity’s estimate in your client budget.
On the opportunity screen, the Included in Budget checkbox can be unchecked to remove these options from a client’s budget. This means that it will be omitted from your client budget, but the opportunity and its estimate will still be associated with the property.
You may want to uncheck this option to exclude opportunities from the client's budget calculations.
For instance, multiple versions of a similar job (like alternative or revised proposals for the same service) would inflate the client's budget if included. Unchecking this box ensures that only the relevant, specific opportunities are factored into the client's budget.