Time Budgets
What is a time budget?
A time budget is the agreement you set up for a piece of work — a project, a client engagement, or a recurring retainer. Each time budget records how the work is billed (a fixed amount, a fixed number of hours, or time & materials), over which period it runs, when it is invoiced, and which organization and contact it belongs to. It is the anchor that the rest of Time & Resource Management hangs off: resources, services, time, and invoices are all organised per time budget.
Where to find Time Budgets
In the left sidebar, open Time & Resource Management and choose Time Budgets. You’ll land on the time budgets overview.
The time budgets overview
The list shows one row per time budget, with these columns:
| Column | Content |
|---|---|
| Name | The budget name (click to open the time budget) |
| Organization | The linked organization, with its logo or initials |
| Contact | The linked contact, shown as a badge with initials |
| Budget type | Fixed amount, Fixed hours, or Time & Materials |
| Fixed amount | The agreed amount (for fixed-amount budgets) |
| Fixed hours | The agreed hours, suffixed with h (for fixed-hours budgets) |
| Period | The start date, and the end date if one is set |
| Status | Draft, Active, Closed, or Archived |
| Updated at | When the budget was last changed |
Rows that have no organization, contact, amount, or hours show an empty cell. The list is paginated and sorted with the most recently created budget first.
At the top of the list you can:
- Search — type in the search bar to find a time budget by name.
- Filter by status — Active, Closed, Draft, or Archived.
- Filter by budget type — Fixed amount, Fixed hours, or Time & Materials.
Adding a time budget
- Click New time budget (top right).
- Fill in the details. These fields are required:
- Name
- Budget type — Fixed amount, Fixed hours, or Time & Materials
- Start date
- Invoicing date (or an invoicing day when the budget is a retainer — see below)
- Set the two toggles:
- Is this time budget billable? — on by default
- Is this a retainer? — off by default
- Depending on the budget type, fill in the matching limit:
- Fixed amount — required when the budget type is Fixed amount
- Fixed hours — required when the budget type is Fixed hours
- Time & Materials needs no fixed limit
- Optionally add:
- End date
- Organization to link (picked from your existing organizations)
- Contact to link (picked from your existing contacts)
- Description
- Click Create time budget.
A new time budget always starts with the status Draft. It can move to Active, Closed, or Archived afterwards.
Budget types
The budget type controls how the work is billed and which limit you set:
| Type | Meaning | Limit field |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed amount | A fixed price is agreed for the work | Fixed amount (required) |
| Fixed hours | A fixed number of hours is agreed | Fixed hours (required) |
| Time & Materials | Work is billed on actual time and costs | No fixed limit |
The budget type is shown as a coloured badge in the overview and on the budget’s detail page.
Retainers and the invoicing date
Every time budget has an invoicing date. How you set it depends on whether the budget is a one-off engagement or a recurring retainer:
- One-off engagement — leave Is this a retainer? off and pick a concrete invoicing date.
- Retainer — turn Is this a retainer? on. Instead of a single date you pick an invoicing day — the day of the month (1–31) on which the retainer is invoiced.
A retainer is marked with a Retainer badge on its detail page.
Billable
The Is this time budget billable? toggle marks whether the work is billed to the client. It is on by default; turn it off for internal or non-billable work.
Linking an organization and contact
Link a time budget to one organization and one contact so it’s clear who the work is for. Both are optional and chosen from your existing CRM records (see ../../crm/organizations/ and ../../crm/contacts/). The linked names appear in the overview columns and in the budget header. If you later remove the linked organization or contact from your CRM, the budget keeps working — the link is simply cleared.
Validation rules
When you create or edit a time budget, FlowQi checks:
- Name is required and can be at most 120 characters.
- Description can be at most 500 characters.
- Start date and invoicing date are required.
- End date, if set, must be on or after the start date.
- Fixed amount is required when the budget type is Fixed amount.
- Fixed hours is required when the budget type is Fixed hours.
Editing a time budget
You can edit a time budget in two ways:
- In the overview, select a single time budget with its checkbox and click Edit in the action bar at the bottom.
- Open the time budget and click the gear icon (settings) in the header.
Editing reopens the same form, so you can change the name, budget type, dates, invoicing, limits, billable and retainer toggles, linked organization and contact, and description. Click Update time budget to save. The Update button stays disabled until you’ve actually changed something.
Only the creator of a time budget can edit or delete it. If you didn’t create it, ask the person who did, or an administrator.
The time budget detail page
Open a time budget by clicking its name. The header shows:
- The budget name
- A Retainer badge (only for retainers), the budget type badge, and the status badge
- The period, the linked organization, and the linked contact
- Avatars of the people on the budget’s team
- A gear icon to open settings
Below the header are four tabs:
| Tab | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Overview | Summary figures for the budget and the services on it |
| Resources | The team members assigned to the budget and their hours |
| Time Entries | Time logged against the budget |
| Invoices | Invoices linked to the budget — for a retainer, generated from its invoicing schedule |
Each tab opens via its own link, so you can share or bookmark a budget on a specific tab.
Services on a budget
The Overview tab lists the services that make up the budget. A service comes from your Services catalogue (see ../../financial-management/services/) and is added to the budget as a line of the agreement — either at an hourly rate with a number of agreed hours, or as a fixed price with estimated hours. Together the services describe what the budget covers and what it’s worth.
Resources and time
The Resources tab is where team members are allocated to the budget and their hours are managed. Time that people log lands on the budget and appears in the Time Entries tab. For how time itself is captured, see ../time-entries/; for managing the people side, see ../resources/.
Team members and roles
Each time budget has its own team. A person on a budget has one of two roles:
- Owner — manages the budget and its team
- Member — works on the budget
Team members appear as avatars in the budget header.
Status: draft, active, closed, or archived
A time budget moves through four statuses:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Newly created, not yet started — the default for every new budget |
| Active | Currently running |
| Closed | Finished |
| Archived | Set aside; kept for reference |
Use the status filter at the top of the overview to focus on the budgets you care about.
Deleting time budgets
- In the overview, select a time budget with its checkbox.
- In the action bar at the bottom, click Delete.
- Confirm in the dialog.
Deleting a time budget cannot be undone — the budget is permanently removed, together with its team assignments. Not sure? Set its status to Archived instead. Only the creator of a budget can delete it.
Permissions
Time budgets are scoped to your organization, so you only ever see your own organization’s budgets. Anyone with access to Time & Resource Management can view the overview and open budgets, but only the creator of a time budget can edit or delete it. If you need a change to a budget someone else created, ask the creator or an administrator.