Project budgets
A project budget isn't a single number you watch drift up or down. It's a structure — sections and line items, held across versions and scenarios — plus a small set of figures that are each true at the same time and answer different questions: what did we plan, what have we committed to, what has actually happened, and what has been billed.
The structure: sections, line items, versions, scenarios
A deal's budget is organized into sections (logical groupings like "Production", "Sponsorship", "Hospitality"), each holding line items — individual services with a quantity and a price. A new deal starts directly on this structure — an editable live spine with no version yet — so you can add sections and line items immediately; nothing forces you to capture a version first.
Two structures let you compare options without losing history:
- Versions are immutable snapshots of the live spine at a point in the negotiation ("Initial Proposal", "Revised Proposal") — not copies of the previous version, but a re-baseline of whatever the live budget looks like right now. You capture one explicitly (a required "what changed" note), or ema captures one for you when a scenario is promoted or the deal is marked Won. Once captured, a version is permanently view-only; further edits happen back on Live.
- Scenarios are alternative configurations within the live spine or a given version — "Standard Package" next to "Gold Sponsor" next to "Gold Sponsor plus Workshop" — so you can show a client several options in one meeting without creating a new version for each.
Reach for a scenario when you're comparing options at the same point in the negotiation — nothing has changed hands yet, you're just presenting alternatives. Reach for a new version when the client has actually asked for a revised proposal and you want to keep the previous offer intact for history.
Scenario totals are never added together in the budget summary — each scenario is a complete alternative offer, so the summary reflects only the scenarios you've chosen to show at that moment.
Create and compare scenarios within a deal version.
The project-level budget dashboard and the version-comparison view.
Several numbers, not one
Once a budget is live, "how are we doing" has more than one honest answer, and ema deliberately keeps them as separate columns rather than collapsing them into one "actual". The deal's Financial Statement shows, per line, excluding tax:
| Column | What it means |
|---|---|
| Expected | The budgeted amount for the line — what the plan says |
| Incurred | Costs or revenue actually incurred to date |
| Invoiced | The amount that has been invoiced |
| Settled | Payments, credits, and write-offs that relieve the balance; this is not cash alone |
| Outstanding | The difference between invoiced and settled |
Sitting alongside those, a commitment is a separate concept that isn't a Financial Statement column but drives what eventually shows up as Incurred: a purchase order is a formal commitment at agreed quantities and prices, raised before a cost is incurred, so what the vendor delivers can be checked against what was ordered. The PO, the goods received note, and the vendor's bill are matched three ways, so quantity or price differences are flagged rather than silently absorbed. A cost with no PO behind it only appears for the first time when the bill arrives, at whatever figure the vendor put on it — nothing caught it earlier.
Income, cash, and bad debt
Budget income is issued invoices less issued credits, excluding tax. An unpaid issued invoice already contributes income; receiving its payment does not add that income again. A draft invoice does not contribute income.
Cash is shown separately as completed receipts less completed refunds, including tax. Issuing a credit note changes income but does not, by itself, prove that cash has been returned.
A write-off retains the original invoiced income and records a separate adjustment. Revenue write-offs are bad debt expense; held and pass-through client-money write-offs adjust client money rather than operator profit. A subsequent recovery or reversal reduces that adjustment without recognising the invoice income again.
The budget's Event result combines operator and client-money income and expenses, less their respective write-off adjustments once. It is not the operator's profit or the bank balance; cash movement is not deducted again.
Variance always has a column name
"The margin moved" only means something once you say against what. Variance can be measured against the budget (Expected), against what's been committed, or against what's been invoiced — and each answers a different question. A line that's under budget against Expected can still be over against Committed, if a purchase order has been raised for more than was planned but nothing has been delivered yet. Name the column when you report a variance, the same way you'd name a currency.
The Financial Statement on a deal shows Expected, Incurred, Invoiced, and Settled per line, excluding tax, with an Event Balance block covering funding received and supplier costs paid. It defaults to live data; a snapshot-as-of picker rebuilds the statement as it stood on a past date, for "what did we think we'd make in May" comparisons.
The Financial Statement and Billing views for a single deal.
How a purchase order becomes a formal commitment, and three-way matching against goods received and bills.
What your client sees
If client budgets are enabled for the project, each line item has its own transparency setting — transparent (the client sees cost and markup alongside price), non-transparent (totals only), or internal-only (never shown to the client regardless of the default) — falling back to a project or deal default when a line doesn't override it. The shared view includes budget line items, totals, an income and cash breakdown, and a PDF export.
Both internal and shared budget income use issued invoices less credits. Client views include only the lines shared with that client and omit internal bad debt details. Use the separate cash figures to check what has actually been received or refunded; an unpaid invoice can contribute income while cash received remains zero. See Budget to margin for the monthly reconciliation loop.
How labour cost rates, charge rates, and timesheets feed the same budget lines.
How your ema subscription and a project's posting configuration are two separate commercial questions.