Modify Locked Budget

The Budget Adjustment feature provides the flexibility to rebalance your finances even after a project budget is locked and funds are allocated to work items. If a specific area requires additional funding, you can seamlessly shift surplus money from other parts of the budget or reallocate cost types within the exact same line item.

When transferring funds across your budget, you can draw from the following sources:

• Remaining Balance: The surplus money left in a standard budget line item after fully funding its associated scheduled tasks.
• Unallocated Funds (Contract-Derived Budgets): A dedicated reserve line (Label: Unallocated, Code: 99-999) created under a specific contract group. These funds can only be distributed to other budget lines within that same group.
• Unallocated Funds (Manually Created Budgets): A single, project-wide reserve line (Unallocated, 99-999). These funds can be distributed to any line item across the entire project budget.
• Internal Cost Redistribution: In addition to transferring funds between different items, you can redistribute the amounts allotted for specific cost types (like material, labor, or equipment) and adjust your profit entirely within a single budget line.

Use the links below to jump to the section you need help with:

• The Budget Adjustment Interface
• Transfer Budgets Across Line Items
  • Contract-Based Budgets
  • Manually Created Budgets
• Redistribute Funds Across Cost Types Within a Single Line Item
• Create a new budget line and allocate funds

The Budget Adjustment Interface

• Ensure you are in the 'Budget Adjustment' screen of the 'Finance' module. If not:
  • Open the management console of the project.
  • Click the app launcher icon in the top-right and select "Finance"
  • Click 'Contract' on top and select 'Budget Adjustment' on the left

The 'Budget Adjustment' screen opens:

Transfer Budgets Across Line Items

The process for moving funds depends on how your project budget was initially set up:

1. Contract-Based Budgets

These are derived by splitting individual contract line items into specific budget line item groups.

• Transfer Rule: You can only move surplus or Unallocated funds to other budget line items within the same contract group.

Background: When a commitment contract is locked, Linarc automatically creates a draft budget mapped 1:1 with your contract items. You can split each of these into multiple budget lines (defining cost codes, descriptions, and specific amounts for labor, material, and equipment). Overhead is automatically calculated based on your contract terms, and any remaining portion of the line item's total is considered profit. See Set up Budget from Project Contract for more details.

2. Manually Created Budgets

These budgets are set up entirely independent of the contract breakdown.

• Transfer Rule: You have full flexibility. You can move surplus or Unallocated funds to any line item across the entire project budget.

To move surplus funds from a source budget line

• Ensure the source line item has a sufficient surplus amount shown in the Remaining Budget column.
• Click inside the cell in the 'Adjustment' column and enter the total value to be deducted as a negative value.
• Click inside the cell in the 'Adjustment' column of the target line item and enter the value to add as a positive value.

Tip: You can also add a new budget line item and move funds into it. See Create a new budget line and allocate funds for guidance.

The moved amount adds to the 'Profit' component of the target line. You can manually distribute this across different cost types from the profit pool.

• Repeat the process to move the remaining amount to other target items until the full adjustment is exhausted.

Reminder - In a contract-based budget, you can move amounts only to line items within the same contract group

• Click 'Save Adjustments' for your changes to take effect

To move funds from the reserve fund ('Unallocated')

• Ensure the Unallocated budget line has a sufficient amount shown in the Remaining Budget column.
• Click inside the cell in the Adjustment column and enter the total value to be deducted as a negative value.

• Click inside the cell in the Adjustment column of the target line item and enter the value to add as a positive value.

Tip: You can also add a new budget line item and move funds into it. See Create a new budget line and allocate funds for guidance.

The moved amount adds to the 'Profit' component of the target line. You can manually distribute this across different cost types from the profit pool.

• Repeat the process to move the remaining amount to other target items until the full adjustment is exhausted.

Reminder - In a contract-based budget, you can move amounts only to line items within the same contract group.

• Click 'Save Adjustments' for your changes to take effect

Redistribute Funds Across Cost Types Within a Single Line Item

• Click the cost type field you want to reduce and enter the new, lower amount. The system automatically shifts the deducted funds into the line item's Profit component.
• Click the cost type field you want to increase and enter the new, higher amount. This will draw the required funds from that Profit component.
• Repeat this process for any other cost types that require adjustment.
• Click 'Save Adjustments' at the top-right to apply your updates.

Note: The Profit component acts as a temporary holding pool. You can continue increasing other cost type amounts only as long as there are sufficient funds available in that pool.

Create a new budget line and allocate funds

If a new budget line is required to accommodate new scope or cost requirements while maintaining the contract structure,  you can create one and allocate funds to it.

• Right-click on the contract line and select 'Add Row' to create the new budget line.

Alternatively, in a manually created budget

• Right-click on any budget line item and select 'Add Row.'

You can transfer available funds from existing budget lines or from the Unallocated Cost.

• Allocate the transferred amount across the relevant cost types.

Once the adjustments are saved, the updated funds are available for allocation to scheduled tasks. Any new budget lines created during the adjustment process will also be available for allocation. See Allocate Funds to Work Items for more details. You can also view the history of your budget adjustments. See View Budget Adjustment History for more details.