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Budgets and fixed fees

How long should a T2 take, and what is it priced at? A budget answers both for each period of a service, such as the T2 return for 2025 or September's bookkeeping, and shows the time logged against it as the work goes.

Everyone on the team sees a budget's hours. Its money (the fee, the value of the time and the margin) is for managers, partners, admins and owners.

Set a service's budget

Managers and up see How is it billed? on a service's form:

  • Hourly: its time is invoiced from Unbilled at your rates, as before. A budget in hours is a guide.
  • Fixed fee: one price per period. Its time isn't invoiced; it shows what the work cost against the fee.

Then Fee per period and Budget per period (hours). Each of the service's deadlines starts from them, and follows them when you change them, until someone changes that deadline's own budget. A finished deadline keeps the budget it had.

A signed engagement letter fills them in for the services it sets up: its fee, as one period's. A fee charged every 12 months on a monthly service is a twelfth a month.

What counts towards a budget

Time counts towards the period it's for:

  • The deadline of its task, when it has one (the T2 return's checklist tasks).
  • Else the work under way on its date: time logged in March on a T2 counts towards last year's return while it isn't filed. A task on an instalment counts towards the T2 of the year the instalment is for.

On an entry's form, Counts towards lets you choose another period of its service instead. Your choice stays, whatever the date or task, until you choose Worked out from its task or date again.

See it on the deadline

A service's main deadline shows a Budget card: the hours logged against its budget, amber from 80% and red past it. Managers and up also see:

  • Fee and how it's billed.
  • Value of the time: the hours at each person's billing rate. Hours with no rate are said apart.
  • Margin, for a fixed fee: the fee less the value of its time. Red when the work cost more than the fee.

Edit budget changes that one deadline's budget. From then on, the service's fee and budget leave it as you set it. On the Advanced plan, it also has Who does it, for Capacity: changing only that leaves the budget following its service.

The client's Deadlines tab lists each service's latest periods under Budgets.

The Budgets report

Time › Budgets lists every deadline with a budget due in a period, the most used first: its budget and hours, the share used, the fee, the value of its time, the margin and its status. Narrow it to:

  • Over budget only
  • a Service
  • a client's Partner
  • the deadlines someone logged Time by
  • Open or Closed deadlines

Download CSV gives you the table. Home says how many open deadlines are over budget, under Money.

Be told when it's going over

An automation can act when A deadline's time reaches 80% of its budget, or when it passes its budget: email the client's partner, or make a task to look at it. Each acts once for each deadline. See Automations.

Fixed fees

The fee covers a fixed-fee deadline's time, so you don't invoice that time:

  • While the work is under way, its time is apart on Unbilled, under Fixed-fee work under way. It isn't in the work in progress total, and it isn't offered when you invoice time.
  • When the deadline is done, its budget closes: its time is marked billed on the day it was done, as "Fixed fee", and locked like any billed time. The message says how many hours.
  • Reopening the deadline puts its time back under way. So does changing a done deadline to Hourly.
  • Time logged after it's done is on Unbilled, to bill or mark billed.

You still bill the fee itself as you do today: a recurring invoice, an engagement letter's fee, or an invoice you make. Realization counts the fee when the deadline is done, against the value of its time (see Realization).

Instalments

An instalment, or another of a service's deadlines such as a balance due, can have its own budget, in hours. While it has one, time on its tasks counts towards it instead of the return of its year. Give it one under Budget on the instalment's page; empty the hours to take it away, and its time counts towards the return again.

Who can do it is set for each person, on their page under Team (owners and admins change it): Can budget instalments. Unless set, it's managers and up.

Households

A household's main client shows its members' periods in its Budgets table too, with a total for each period they share: the T1s of a couple billed together, for example.

Cost rates and profit

The margin compares a fixed fee with what its time is worth at your billing rates. To see what it cost the firm, give each person a Cost rate on their page under Team: what an hour of their time costs, pay and all.

Owners and admins then see, on the deadline's Budget card and in Time › Budgets and its CSV, the Cost of the time and a fixed fee's Profit: the fee less that cost. Hours by people with no cost rate are left out, and said. Cost rates put salaries in Firmdesk, so only owners and admins see them, and the profit; managers and partners keep seeing the margin.

Good to know

  • Only a service's main deadline for a period has a budget: the return, or the month's bookkeeping. Its instalments and other deadlines count towards it.
  • Your AI assistant can read budgets and set one deadline's (see AI assistants).