Overview
The Budget vs Actual table gives you a comprehensive snapshot of your project’s financial performance by comparing projected budgets with actual expenses. It helps you make informed decisions on your project, identify discrepancies, and simplify your financial planning. It also helps you allocate your resources more effectively.
Who uses this feature
Administrators, office employees, managers, accountants, and bookkeepers
Primarily for Residential Construction and Commercial Construction business types
Feature configuration
Account configuration is required to use this feature. Please contact Technical Support for details.
Things to know
The Budget vs Actual section is only available with Project Management.
Committed Costs are calculated as the $ total of purchase orders created on a project that have not been received. For more, see Receive purchase orders.
General Ledger (GL) accounts in Budget vs Actual correspond to the GL account assigned to pricebook items such as services, materials, and equipment.
For the data on the GL view to be accurate, make sure your general ledger accounts are set up correctly. For more, see General Ledger Account settings.
Budget vs Actual summary overview
The Budget vs Actual summary bar shows a quick overview of the billed amounts and expenses in your project compared to the total budget. It's a quick visual indicator of your project's progress, allowing you to see the status at a glance.
Budget vs Actual table overview
The Budget vs Actual table gives a more in-depth view of your project’s budget and expenses. You can track and compare your actual expenses to your planned budget. This table updates in real-time as you work through your project and generate actuals.
Note: Account configuration is required to view committed costs in the Budget vs Actual table. Please contact Technical Support for details.
Table sections and rows
Billed section: Revenue for the project. Any task in the project that represents revenue is in the Billed section of the table. You can use project labels to customize the categories shown in the Billed section.
Expenses section: Any task that has a cost associated with it is in the Expenses section of the table. You can use project labels to customize the categories shown in the Expenses section.
Margin $: Dollar value comparing Billed and Expenses (does not include sales tax).
Margin %: Percentage comparing Billed and Expenses.
Uncategorized: If a task, equipment, or material doesn’t have a label assigned to it, it displays as Uncategorized. For more, see Avoid uncategorized expenses.
Table columns
Original Budget: Value for the budget comes from the estimates that you sold to your customer. The budget is an estimate of how much you plan to spend on a particular project.
Change Order: The total dollar amount of change orders made in the project. Change orders are estimates created in the project that will impact the project’s budget and revenue.
Costs Adjustment: The total amount of cost adjustments made in the project. Cost adjustments are change orders that only impact the project’s cost, not the revenue. For example, you may need to add materials to the project but you don’t plan to charge your customer for the additional materials.
Total Budget: This is calculated by adding the original budget to any change orders and any cost adjustments.
Committed Costs: The total amount in purchase orders associated with the project but you haven’t yet been billed for.
Actual: Value for the actuals updates as you accumulate labor for the project and requisition equipment and materials. Actuals start calculating when you generate an invoice, receive bills or issue returns. This is the actual amount you spend on a project.
Note: The actual value for technicians in the table is calculated by taking the hourly rate for the technicians and multiplying it by the paid hours worked on a job.Variance: Actual amount minus Budget amount.
% of Budget Used column: Actual amount divided by the Budget amount.
Quantity and dollar value view
Click the $ or QTY button to see dollars or quantities. You can also use project labels to customize itemization in the Billed and Expenses sections for each project.
Define how cost is calculated
You can define calculations for actual costing used in the Budget vs Actual table. This gives you the flexibility to choose how you want actual costs calculated. Use the Job Costing settings page to select whether actual costs are calculated from one of the following:
Purchase Orders: Costing is calculated by the total purchase orders (committed costs) created and the resulting purchase order vendor bills or non-purchase vendor bills generated.
Receipts: Costing is calculated by the total receipts and the resulting purchase order vendor bills or non-purchase order vendor bills generated. This is the default setting.
Vendor Bills: Costing is calculated by the total purchase order vendor bills or non-purchase order vendor bills generated.
Note: The option you choose here will also impact costing calculations in the job costing and project costing screens, and reports that use job costing information.
To define how costing is calculated:
Go to the navigation bar and click Settings
.In the side panel, go to Accounting > Costing.
From the Calculation Source dropdown, select the option you want.
Receipts for actual cost calculation
Select the Include Receipts for Actual Cost Calculation option in the Costing settings screen to use receipt amounts instead of received purchase order amounts when receipts are available to calculate actual costs for jobs and projects.
Tax expenses in Costing
Select or deselect the Show tax expenses in Costing option in the Costing settings screen to include or exclude taxes from job costing expense and margin calculations. This is to prevent deflating gross margin with the deduction of taxes since taxes are purely a pass through cost with no real margin impact.
Use non-income General Ledger accounts for calculation
Select the Income & Non-Income General Ledger Accounts option in the Costing settings screen to show or hide non-income GL accounts in the job costing sections of the Budget vs Actuals table, the Job Costing screen, and the Project Costing screen. This helps prevent revenue from being overstated in job costing when your workflows require items with non-income GL accounts to be added to invoices.
View Committed Costs in Budget vs Actual
Committed costs are expenses incurred in a project through purchase orders, which the vendor has not yet invoiced the customer for. These costs contrast with actual costs, which are the expenses already billed by the vendor.
To see Committed Costs on a project:
Search for and go to the project you want. The Project screen opens.
In the side menu, click Financials..
On the Financials screen that opens, scroll down to the Budget vs Actual section, andeview the Committed Costs column.
Note: Committed Costs don’t affect the Variance as that is calculated by subtracting the Total Budget from the Actual.
View Budget vs Actual by GL
The GL view option makes it much easier to see which line items are for in-house equipment and materials and which ones are for subcontractors.
To see the GL view in Budget vs Actual:
Search for and go to the project you want. The Project screen opens.
In the side menu, click Financials.
On the Financials screen that opens, scroll down to the Budget vs Actual section.
Click the GL tab. The Project Labels column changes to General Ledger.
Show or hide non-income GL accounts in job costing
If your business requires non-income GL accounts to be added to an invoice, you can choose to show non-income GL accounts in the Budget vs Actuals table, the Job Costing screen, and the Project Costing screen.
To show or hide non-income GL accounts:
Go to the navigation bar and click Settings
.In the side panel, go to Accounting > Costing.
Under the Income & Non-Income General Ledger Accounts section, select Show only Income General Ledger accounts.
When finished, click Save.
Track labor costs by mapping payroll to GL accounts
Tracking labor costs allows you to monitor labor expenses accurately and make sure you stay within budget. To take full advantage of the GL view and properly track labor costs, you need to map all of your timesheet events to your GL Accounts.
To map payroll objects to GL accounts:
Go to the navigation bar and click Settings
.In the side panel, go to Accounting > Payroll GL Mapping.
On the Map Payroll Objects to GL Accounts screen that opens, click the Assign Expense GL Account dropdown for each Payroll Object.
Select an Expense GL Account.
Repeat steps 2-3 for each Payroll Object.
When finished, click Save Changes.
Export the Budget vs Actuals table
Export the Budget vs. Actuals table to an XLSX file to review your project’s financial data outside of ServiceTitan.
To export the Budget vs. Actuals table:
Search for and open the project
On the Project screen that opens, go to the side menu and click Financials.
On the Financials screen that opens, scroll down to the Budget vs. Actual section.
Click Download
at the top of the section.A pop-up appears showing the progress of your XLSX file being generated.
When your file is ready, click Download File.
Open the Itemized Details screen
The Itemized Details screen shows individual pricebook items for each line item in the Budget vs Actual section. Use the search bar to search for items by item name or item source number. The filter options let you filter your search by source type, actuals amount, date, and project labels. Additionally, you can group your list of items by name, source, and date.
To view the Itemized Details screen:
Search for and open the project.
On the Project screen that opens, go to the side menu and click Financials.
On the Financials screen that opens, scroll down to the Budget vs Actual section.
Click the $ or QTY value under a line item’s Total Budget or Actual column.
Review the Itemized Details screen that opens.
What the Itemized Details screen shows you
The Itemized Details screen shows you the following:
Itemized Details For: Shows if the Itemized Details screen is for Budget or Actuals and Billed or Expenses.
# of Items: Total amount of pricebook items in the Itemized Details list.
Total Amount: Sum dollar amount of the Budget or Actual column.
Project Label: Project labels assigned to Billed or Expenses present in these items.
Name column: Name of the pricebook item.
Source column: Project transaction that contains the item.
Budget ($) column: Budget amount for the item in dollars.
Actual ($) column: Actual amount for the item in dollars.
Quantity column: Quantity of the item on the project transaction.
Date column: Date the item was added to the project transaction.
Project Labels/General Ledger column: Project label(s) or General Ledger account assigned to the item.
Want to learn more?
Visit ServiceTitan Academy and enroll in Project Tracking Basics