Billing & Budgets: Track Project Profitability

What's New

• Project Billing Configuration: Enable billing per project with custom hourly rates and currency settings.
• Track-Level Billable Control: Mark individual time entries as billable or non-billable with custom rates.
• Budget Tracking: Set hours-based or amount-based budgets for each project with configurable alert thresholds.
• Budget Alerts: Get notified when projects exceed your specified budget percentage (default 80%).
• Budget Dashboard: New budget summary widget on the Summary page shows tracked vs. billable hours, actual amounts, and budget status at a glance.
• Default Billing Behavior: Configure whether new tracks for a project should be billable by default.

How It Works

When creating or editing a project, enable billing and set your hourly rate and currency. You can also specify whether new time tracks should default to billable. For budget control, set either an hours limit, an amount limit, or both, then choose when you want to be alerted (e.g., at 80% budget consumption).

As you track time on billable projects, each track automatically inherits the project's billing configuration. You can override this per-track by toggling the billable status or setting a custom rate. The system calculates actual amounts based on tracked hours and applied rates.

Budget Monitoring

The new Budget Highlights section on the Summary page gives you an instant overview of all projects with budgets. See tracked hours, billable hours, actual amounts, and how much of your budget has been consumed. Projects that exceed the alert threshold are clearly marked, helping you catch budget overruns before they become problems.

API Improvements

Project and track APIs now support all billing and budget fields. The new /api/projects/budgets endpoint provides aggregated budget data across all projects. Field names have been improved for clarity:billing_enabled, new_tracks_billable, hourly_rate, and billable_ratemake the system's intent immediately clear.

Pro Tip: Set Realistic Budgets

Start with conservative budget estimates and adjust as you learn each project's actual consumption patterns. Use both hours and amount budgets together for better cost control—hours budgets catch scope creep, while amount budgets protect your bottom line. Set alert thresholds around 70-80% to give yourself time to course-correct before hitting the limit.