How to Use the Budgets (Overview) 

Last Updated: 24th November 2024

Applies to:

• Solar Installer users
• Enterprise users

What does a budget look like?
Below is an example of a budget (Showing solar power in this e.g.):

What are budgets for?

• Control the pricing for the proposal 
• Control your profit margins
• Control what info / lines the customer can see in their proposal
  
  

Where do you find budgets?

Budgets are found within Project Options which can be found in tabs; Electrification, Solar Technology, and Battery Technology as seen below.

*If you have not yet created project option lines or don't know what they are, then the below will help:
Solar Power: Creating a Solar Design and Proposal (Overview)
Battery Storage: Creating a Battery Proposal (Overview)
Building Electrification: Creating a Building Electrification Proposal (Overview)
Vehicle Electrification: Creating a Vehicle Electrification Proposal (Overview)

Note: Each project option line contains a seperate budget. 

Budget features to know about:

1. Edit the Quantity, Unit Cost & Margin inputs.
   Note: Margin is not markup.
2. Undo / Clear Budget Change
   When you edit any of the intputs on the budget you can reset them to what they were before you edited them.
   
3. Reset Budget
   Sometimes you have a need to either a) remove any changes you have made to a budget or b) update the budget to what is the companies most recent pricing for products and Cost Management.
   
   Note: If your organisations product or Cost Management pricing changes, no budgets in existing jobs are update automatically. This is to make sure not proposals pricing changes without your intentionall action to do so. This is were the Reset Budget button becomes handy.
4. Delete Lines
   Click on the bin icon on the end of a line to delete if required. 
   Note if you want to get deleted lines back you will need to click on the Reset Budget button.
   
   
5. Control Line Item Visibility in Proposals
   Under the Show Customer column are buttons to control what the customer can see in the proposal.
   
   
   1. To show the lines description in the proposal click on the word Line so it becomes blue
   2. Then, to also show the lines quantity in the proposal click on the # button
   3. To also show the lines unit price to the customer in the proposal click on the $ button. 
      Pro tip: To get the budget looking exactly how you want it use the Preview Quote button at the bottom of the budget. This way any changes can easily be checked from the customer perspective.
6. Preview Quote
   This handy button (as mentioned above) is used to quickly check how the budget will apear in the quote section of the proposal - saving you needing to go into the proposal to see what it will look like.
   
7. Automated vs Manual lines
   When a budget is initially created in an opportunity it will use the Cost Management for the automated initial popuplation of non product line items. The product line items shown are based on the selection/s when the options are initially generated. 
   Initially the SpendWatt icon is shown in several locations to resembles 'automatic' to quickly show that nothing has been edited - located:
   1. In a budget at the far right end of all lines.
   2. In the project optoins next to the option name
      
      
   Pro tip: When you open an opportunity and go to a budget rapidly know if it's been edited or not by glancing to see if the option has the SpendWatt icon or not.
   
   When a line is edited the SpendWatt logo changes to an edit person icon so you can quickly see if a) and option is edited, and b) what line has been edited.
   
8. Adding manual line. 
   This is as easy as clicking on the grey + Add button at the top right of the budget and completing this popup. See Understanding the Different Budget Line Types for what the different line types mean and how they work uniquely from one-an-other.
9. Incentives and control through Opportunity Preferences
   Control what incentives are auto added to a proposal using the Opportunity Preferences popup.
10. Automatic GST management correct for Residential and Commercial
    The opportunity is either setup as Residential or Business. This can be confirmed and edited in the cusomer energy profile. Based on this selection the GST of the opportunity is manged uniquely. This is particularly important for how incentives and out of pocut costs used for retun on investment figures are calculated.
11. Automatic budget creation.
    Automating the creation of your budgets using the Cost Management feature. This automatically adds whatever line items to the budget automatically subject to logic you can control eliminating the need for spreadsheets and manual entry of such costs (and incentives).