Contracting a budget in Squava finalizes your project budget so time, expenses, and invoicing can be tracked against an approved project plan. Once contracted, your budget becomes an active working budget that helps you monitor project progress, budget usage, and overall project performance.
 

Step-by-Step Guide: 

1. Access Project Budget

   
   
   Now that your project has been set up, you are ready to contract your budget.  You will first need to open up the project you want to contract and go to the Budget Page.  Now click on the green 'Contract Budget' button.
    

2. Enter Budget Contract Information

   
   
   Once you've clicked the green 'Contract Budget' button, a new window will appear for you to enter the details of your budget contract.  You must enter information in the following fields:  Win Percentage & Contract Date (effective date).  If a retainer is paid for the project, you will enter the amount in the last field (for more information on Retainers, see our help article: Applying Retainers. Once you are done, click 'Save'. 
    

3. Modifying a Budget
   

   
   You have successfully contracted your budget!  As you can see, the 'Budget Summary' link outlines the summary of your budget.  If you need to modify your budget after your budget has been contracted, simply click the 'Modify Budget' button. 
    

   NOTE: A really cool thing you can view once you've started to log time for this project is a percentage of your project completion.  To view this information, click on your project, and once you're in the project details, click the 'Management' button next to the project name.  In this example, we have logged some time to show you what the 'Complete' column will look like.  This will help you know if you're on track with your budget and let you know exactly where you are with this particular project.

   
   
    

4. Uncontracting a Budget/Mod
   

   Uncontracting your budget or budget modification (MOD) provides a convenient way to make changes to the details of your projects.  Uncontracting a budget means you are ‘moving’ that budget back to the editable “Proposal” stage, where you can update the budget(s), expenses, dates, notes, etc.  
   
   To help make sure you don’t unintentionally mess up your project or billings, please be aware of the following controls in place to help protect your data:

   1. If a project invoice exists after the date of the budget to be uncontracted, SQUAVA will not allow you to uncontract that budget.  This control prevents you from sending potentially conflicting information on a subsequent invoice.  However, if the invoice has not been sent and rescinding it will not create conflict, you can rescind the conflicting invoice(s), uncontract the budget, make any desired changes, recontract the budget, and recreate (finalize) the invoice.
      
       
   2. If you uncontract a budget and time and/or expense has been charged to a task or expense category, you will not be able to delete those items without first removing the time or expense assigned to the task or category.  This is intended to preserve the integrity of your data and not have information inadvertently deleted.
      
       
   3. You are limited to the changed items that were created or added to the specific budget/mod that you uncontract.  If you intend to edit items further back, you may have to delete the budget and uncontract another budget/mod.  Please be aware that invoices may create conflict with your intended changes.  Again, these controls are in place to help protect your projects and data.
      
      To uncontract a budget or budget modification, click on the Budget Summary tab, click the uncontract button, and make the desired changes, then simply click the Contract Budget as you originally did to re-contract the budget.
      
      NOTE: Please keep in mind that you cannot have more than one uncontracted MOD at a time.  So, to reach the first budget, you’ll need to delete all the MODs created after the budget.  Please be aware of the controls defined above.
       

SUCCESS!!! 

• Now that you've learned how to contract a budget in SQUAVA, you will need to learn how to log time to your projects. 
• Check out the Help Article called Tracking Your Time.