Project finances, budget, and Invoices

Planned and actual amounts, rates, and document preparation.

The financial overview combines project cost, labor time, Expenses, Invoices, and projected Invoices. What you see depends on the Project and Financial module permissions.

In the budget, plan revenue and Expenses using line items. A line item can include Item, quantity, price, vendor, stage, comments, and responsible parties. Enter actual amounts only in accordance with your organization's agreed accounting workflow. When creating a project from Opportunities, the budget can be prepared based on its Items.

The actions menu may offer Proforma Invoice, Invoice, or Invoice based on the budget. These actions prepare the document form; before final saving, verify the client, organization, currency, taxes, line items, and project. The action may be blocked for an inactive client.

For hourly projects, distinguish between billable time, time already invoiced, and time not yet invoiced. Test scenarios involving multiple currencies, rounding, and partial Invoices using a test project first.

Financial Control

In the budget, distinguish between planned and actual figures and agree on who updates each value. Reconcile budget lines against billable time and expenses. If an hourly rate is used, verify the rate for each relevant task.

After creating a document, check its link to the project and ensure the relevant time is marked as billed. Verify the impact of cancelling or deleting a document on the project summary before correcting actual financial data.

Why do planned and actual project budget amounts differ?

Planned and actual amounts are different measures. First identify the specific budget line and its source. Check the linked project, the inclusion-in-budget setting, the document status, and whether you are comparing the same kind of amount.

Invoice amount and Item cost

When an Invoice is included in a project budget, actual revenue is based on its subtotal less the overall discount, while actual expenses are based on its Item cost. The final amount payable including VAT therefore does not necessarily match the actual-revenue line.

Example: if the Invoice amount excluding VAT after discount is 1,000 and the included Items cost 600, the expected actual revenue for that Invoice's budget line is 1,000 and actual expenses are 600. The difference of 400 does not establish the profit of the whole project or its final accounting result: the project may contain other expenses and lines.

Expense status and inclusion in the budget

An Expense must have a project assigned and be selected for inclusion in the project budget. Its actual amount also depends on its status: an entry in the initial status may not yet contribute an actual amount. Creating or paying an Expense alone does not explain the entire budget recalculation.

If a planned amount remains after editing while the actual amount changes, that alone does not establish a duplicate: creating an Expense and updating an existing budget line can follow different paths. Do not delete a line just to make planned and actual amounts equal.

Checking one discrepancy

Select one budget line and open its source document.
Compare the project, organization, document status, discount, VAT, and Item cost. Only compare amounts that represent the same measure.
Check whether an amount was also entered manually or came from another document. Equal numbers alone do not establish that they have the same source.
If the discrepancy remains, send Hanna Support the project and document links, the specific budget line, the expected and displayed amounts, and what changed before the discrepancy appeared. Do not alter real financial data solely as a test.