How To: Create a Budget for Jobs and Contacts

Budgets give you the ability to calculate your job costs, determine overheads, track commissions, and see your profit margin on a job. The budgeting tool in JobNimbus is available to Professional subscribers on the Financial tab of both Jobs and Contacts.

Here, we’ll help run you through the basics to get you started using our budgeting tool.

Getting Started with Budgets for Jobs & Contacts

Enabling Budgets in Account Settings

By default, the Budget feature is turned off. JobNimbus has features like this turned off by default to help new users by making the interface simpler and easier to learn.

To enable the Budget feature, go to your name at the top right corner and choose Account Settings. Only admin users can access Account Settings.

On the Features tab, click the Enable button to turn on Budgets.

Creating a Budget

To start creating a budget, go to any job or contact. On the Financial tab of that contact or job, you will now see a Budgets grid along with an Add Budget button.

Click the Add Budget button to add a new Budget. You can also choose an existing estimate and use its action menu to create a “take-off” budget from that estimate. 

At the top of the Budget, there are several options you can select:

Job/Contact – This is the job or contact for which this Budget is being created.
Price – This is the price you are planning to charge the customer. You can either enter a manual total price amount you are charging the customer to work from or you can choose an existing estimate on this Job/Contact that will be the starting price used. You start with the price here and then add your costs, commissions, & overheads down below and your margin will automatically be calculated for you.
Budget Date – The date for which you are creating this Budget.

Under the Budget’s overview section is where you can enter your costs and overheads as well as commissions. You can pre-set a template for what items automatically appear on your budget by going to Account Settings -> Budget tab.

Use the Add Line Item link to add as many costs and overheads you need for this Budget. When you add a new budget line item, the following box will open to allow you to enter the details of this cost or overhead.

Description – The description of the Budget Line Item.
Amount/Percentage – The fixed amount or percentage of the Budget Line Item.
Sub Total – The sub total for the Budget Line Item.
Total – The updated total after each Budget Line Item is applied.

You can hover over any line item and a little “X” will appear allowing you to remove that line item if you do not want to include it on this Budget.

You can also drag and drop line items to change the order of how they are calculated against the total. Use the three-lined grabber icon to move items up and down in the list.

Notice at the bottom of your Budget Line Items, the Gross Profit and Gross Margin are automatically calculated for you.

Below the Budget Line Items is the Commissions section where you can enter any commissions that will be paid as part of this budget. Click the Add Commission link button to apply commissions to this budget.

The Add Commission box allows you to enter the details of your commission amount and who the commission is for. You can set up a default commission template as a starting point for new budgets by going to Account Settings > Budget tab.

Description – The description of the commission.
Percentage – The percentage amount of the commission to be paid.
To – Who the commission is for. There are three options:

• This breakdown does not go to a specific user – The commission is not paid to any specific JobNimbus user.
• Sales Rep of Job or Contact – The commission will be paid to the user designated as the Sales Rep on this Job or Contact.
• This user selected below – The commission will be paid to the JobNimbus user selected in the drop down list.

Click the Save Commission button to add this commission to the budget. The list of commissions is displayed along with the overall Net Profit and Net Margin of the budget:

When you’re done, click the Save Budget button to save the changes to the Budget.

Viewing a Budget

Once a Budget has been created, the Budget’s overview information is shown at the top. The specific Budget Line Items and Commissions are shown below and at the bottom, you can add notes to this Budget as well. 

Marking Commissions Paid

JobNimbus also provides an easy way to track which commissions you have paid out. On the list of commissions for the Budget, there is a Manage column with a Mark Paid link button.

To mark a commission as paid, click the Mark Paid link button. The paid date will automatically be noted and the status will update to show that the commission was paid. The Mark Paid button also toggles to Mark Unpaid allowing you to reset the commission if you marked it as “paid” by accident.

Budget Menu Options

The Budget menu provides a few options for working with and managing the Budget:

Edit – Puts the Budget back into edit mode where you can change line items and commissions.
Add Note – Adds a note to this budget.
Delete – Deletes the Budget. NOTE: Only Admins can delete items.

Managing Budgets on a Job or Contact

To see a list of Budgets on a job or contact, go to the Financial tab of the job or contact. The Budgets grid will display the list of Budgets for that job or contact along with a link to view or edit those Budgets, the date the Budget was set for, the Gross Profit, Net Profit, and status of the Budget.

And that’s it!

Now you’re ready to get out there and start budgeting your work.

If you have any more questions about how to set up Work or Material Orders using our new tools, please leave a comment below or email us at support@jobnimbus.com.

For more tutorials and how-to’s on powerful JobNimbus features, click here.