Budgets, cost and margin
A budget says how much of a client’s, an epic’s or a space’s hours or money is gone, what is left and where it ends. Cost rates add what the hours cost you, so a report can show the margin to the people you choose.
Set a budget
An admin sets budgets under Jira settings › Apps › Logline settings › Budgets (see Settings). Pick the Client field first if clients are a field on your work items, then add a budget:
- Budget on a space, an epic or a client;
- In hours or money (the currency of the hourly rates);
- the Amount, and For the whole work or each month;
- for the whole work of a space or a client, Counting from, the day it counts time from. An epic’s counts all its time.
Where the columns show
A report shows Budget, Spent, Left, % used and At completion when its first rows are spaces, epics or the client field: set Rows to Space, Epic or the client field. Only the first rows carry a budget, so nothing is counted twice. The Total line adds the budgets shown; hours and money, or a month and the whole work, do not add up, so the Total says so and shows no sum.
A figure Logline cannot back says “—” and, on hover, why: a monthly budget needs a period of whole months, a money budget needs hourly rates with every billable hour priced, and a budget counted from a day more than 400 days back is more than Logline reads.
What Spent counts
- A monthly budget counts the report’s period in whole months (This month, Last quarter): the budget times the months, against everyone’s time in its scope. Choose people and there is no figure.
- A budget for the whole work on an epic counts all the time on the epic, its child work items and their sub-tasks, as the work item panel does.
- A budget for the whole work on a space or a client counts time from its Counting from day to today.
An hours budget counts every hour logged. A money budget counts the billable amount.
At completion
For an epic, At completion is the time so far plus its remaining estimate, priced at today’s rates for a money budget, with a parent’s own estimate left out where its child work items carry one (hover names what was left out). For a monthly budget it is the spend per working day so far times the working days left. A budget for the whole of a space or a client has no end to pace against, and an epic with no remaining estimate has no forecast.
Cost and margin, and who sees them
With Cost rates set, reports add Cost and Margin after Amount, and the Worklogs view adds them to each worklog. Cost counts billable time only, and the margin is the amount less the cost, shown only when every billable hour has a rate and a cost rate.
Jira admins and one Jira group an admin picks see them. Everyone else sees amounts as before. Logline decides that before the figures leave Jira, so a page cannot ask for more. See Permissions and data.
In downloads
Download Excel and Download CSV carry what the page shows: Cost (USD) and Margin (USD) after Amount (USD), then Budget period and the budget columns in hours and in money, then Used (%). A budget’s cells sit on the first line of its row, so a column sum counts each budget once. The Worklogs sheet adds Cost rate, Cost and Margin. A person who does not see cost never gets those columns in a file.
If you don’t see them
- No Cost or Margin: you are not a Jira admin or in the group that sees cost, or no cost rates are set, or the report has no billable rule and hourly rates.
- No budget columns: the report’s first rows are not a space, an epic or the client field, none of them has a budget, or your Jira admin shows you only your own worklogs.
- “—” in a budget cell: hover it; the reason is there.