Contracting a Budget

Quick Summary of Step-by-Step Guide:  

1. Click on the 'Clients & Projects' tab→ 'Proposals & Projects' sub-tab
2. Select the applicable project
3. Click on the green 'Contract Budget' button 
4. ‘Uncontract’ a budget or budget modification (MOD)

In-Depth Step-by-Step Guide: 

1. Now that your project has already been set up and you're ready to contract your budget, you will first need to open up the project you are wanting to contract. Click on the green 'Contract Budget' button.  
   
   
   
   
   
2. Once you've clicked the green 'Contract Budget' button, a new window will appear for you to enter the details of your budget contract.  Once you're done, click 'Save'. 
   
             
   
   NOTE:  If this project has a retainer, check out our Help Article: Applying Retainers. 
   
   
3. You have successfully contracted your budget!  As you can see, the 'Budget Summary' link outlines the summary of your budget.  If you ever 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 how the 'Complete' column will look like.  This will help you know if you're on track with your budget and lets you know exactly where you are with this particular project.
    
   
   
   
4. ‘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 make updates to 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 is intended to prevent 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 which you uncontract.  If your intent is to edit items farther 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 project data.

      To uncontract a budget or budget modification, click on the Budget Summary tab and 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 you cannot have more than one uncontracted MOD at a time.  So, in order to reach the first budget, you’ll need to delete all the MOD’s 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.