Project Budgets

Give each project a budget — in hours or currency — and Leenops tracks how much you've spent as approved time and expenses roll in. The project overview shows budget-vs-actual so you see overruns early, not at the end of the quarter.

Setting a Budget

1. Open a project
2. Go to Settings → Budget
3. Pick a budget type:

4. Enter the amount and (for retainer) the billing period
5. Save

Tracking Actuals

Leenops automatically tallies:

• Approved time entries — converted to cost using the billable rate
• Linked expenses — anything tagged to the project in the Finance module
• Manual adjustments — optional entries for non-time/expense costs

The Actual number updates in real time as entries are approved.

Budget Status Indicators

The project overview card and the Portfolio Dashboard show color-coded status:

Retainer Behavior

Retainer budgets reset each billing period (typically monthly). At period close:

• Unused hours can roll over to the next period (configurable)
• The new period starts at the full retainer amount
• Historical utilization is preserved in Reports

Budget vs. Actual Reports

The Reports page has a budget-vs-actual view with:

• Per project — current status, trend, projected end-of-project cost
• Per team — aggregate utilization
• Over time — historical budget performance

Project Billing Workspace

Open a project's Billing tab to review the commercial work that still needs attention:

• Invoice history for the project.
• Linked project expenses, including total cost and uninvoiced count.
• Quick actions to bill approved expenses or start from catalog products and materials.
• CSV export for the project's expense history.

This gives project managers and finance the same view of recoverable costs before invoices go out.

Progress Billing and Payment Applications

For staged delivery, use the project's Operations tab to prepare progress billing before the invoice is created. Progress billing lets you invoice by the current percentage complete on quote, contract, or project lines.

1. Start from an accepted quotation, contract, or project budget with agreed line values.
2. Open Project > Operations.
3. Create a payment application or progress billing draft.
4. Enter the current % complete per line.
5. Review what was billed previously so only the new progress is billed.
6. Attach job reports, pictures, notes, or approved change requests as backup.
7. Send the approved amount to Finance as an invoice.

This is useful for contractor payment applications, but it also works for IT implementations, service rollouts, agency retainers, and any project where customers are billed as work advances.

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Next Steps

• Time Tracking — approved hours feed the actuals
• Portfolio Dashboard — see budget status across all projects
• Reports — deep dive into budget performance