A well-crafted budget leads to more efficient resourcing, better cost control, and sophisticated financial forecasting - crucial to your firm's project success.

Building a budget is one of the first steps you take when you create a new project in Projectworks. We’re upgrading this budget-building process in response to community feedback, making budgets easier and more flexible for everyone.

With this upgrade, you can expect to:

• Save time when building a budget
• Update your budgets easily as project scope changes
• Get team members up-to-speed faster

Your existing projects will be automatically migrated as part of the upgrade. Depending on what features you use (for example, the Projectworks API or our BI views), and how your projects are structured, you may need to review these changes. If you are affected directly, you will receive an email from Projectworks.

Why we're upgrading the budget building experience

Building a budget is a crucial first step in creating a project. Projectworks makes it easy to create a project, build a budget, and start tracking time and expenses - but there are a few things in the workflow that we are improving:

Limited to one pricing method

Projectworks offers 3 ways to build a project (below), but these different pricing methods can't be combined when building a budget for a single project:

• Budget level – Fee-based pricing
• Timecode level – Fee-based pricing
• Timecode level – Hourly-based pricing (hours × rate)

Confusion over hours

Project managers are sometimes confused between the terms “Budgeted Hours” and “Expected Hours” in Projectworks.

• “Budgeted Hours” are created when resourcing a project.
• “Expected Hours” on time codes are used to specifically allocate certain hours to a person for a particular project.

Confusion over “shadow resources”

“Shadow resources” is a term used in Projectworks to denote a placeholder employee role that can be used during resourcing. This isn’t a common term, and so it has the potential to confuse users.

What’s new: Key budgeting enhancements

Build up project pricing at budget and time code level

We’re retiring the old project-level pricing method and introducing a more flexible approach.

With the new budget interface, you can assign “Top-Down” (a fixed price regardless of hours worked) or “Bottom-Up” pricing at both the budget and timecode level.

• Bottom-Up at the budget level is calculated from the underlying timecodes.
• Bottom-Up at the timecode level is calculated from the assigned people/placeholder hours and rates.

You will be able to mix and match pricing methods to build a custom project budget that works the way you do. This upgrade will let you combine Top-Down and Bottom-Up fee types at either the budget line or time code level, making it easier to adapt when project scope changes or variations occur.

Simplified terminology

We’re removing the “Budgeted Hours” and “Expected Hours” units, and replacing them with “Allocated Hours”. This will make terminology consistent between timecode allocation and resourcing screens.

We’re also replacing the term “Shadow Resources” with “Placeholders”. You will be able to allocate timecodes to Persons or Placeholders, unlocking granular budget building even if you’re not sure who you’ll assign to the project yet.

How it works: Building a budget step-by-step

Product expert Lauren gives you a quick preview of the changes in this video:

What are the benefits?

This budget upgrade will save you time and make it easier to price projects, so you can focus on the work that matters.

Manual work is eliminated

You will be able to build budgets faster with an improved, structured pricing model at the Budget/Timecode level, and ditch any external spreadsheets you keep for project pricing calculations.

Building budgets for complex projects is easy

By defining project pricing at a more granular level (budget and time code), you will be able to easily accomodate variations in contracts (Fixed Fee, T&M, or a mix).

By mixing both top-down and bottom-up pricing methods, spreading allocated hours across multiple placeholders, and assigning rates per-person (not just placeholders), it will be possible to build more precise budgets.

Intuitive user experience in Projectworks

We’re making the time code allocation workflow consistent across budget building and resourcing. In addition, by retiring “Budgeted” and “Expected” hours and replacing them with “Allocated” hours, we will reduce confusion for new Projectworks users during onboarding.

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For an in-depth look at the rationale behind the upcoming changes, watch our on-demand webinar from earlier in the year:

The team members who will benefit most

With these upcoming changes, Projectworks removes complexity, saves time, and ensures that your project budgets and allocations work exactly the way you need them to. Whether you're structuring a simple or highly-detailed project, you’ll benefit from a flexible and intuitive experience.

These upgrades will benefit a few roles at your organization in particular:

Your Project Management Officer (PMO)

The PMO oversees the organization’s project portfolio, and wants to quickly gain an accurate picture of project performance across the company.

This budget and pricing upgrade in Projectworks will increase the flexibility and therefore accuracy of project budgets, enabling more accurate project metrics across the project portfolio.

Your Ops Manager

The Ops Manager ensures the company is running efficiently. They are focused on optimizing margin through business process.

As for the PMO, more accurate project budgets ensure more accurate project metrics across the project portfolio. Staff will also save time while using Projectworks due to simple and flexible budget building, intuitive time code allocation, and a consistent user experience.

Hear it from our product manager

“This upgrade makes pricing and budgeting more accurate, more flexible, and more aligned with how consulting teams actually work. It’s designed to help you move faster, budget at a granular level, and make the whole process feel more intuitive.”— Vijay Raghuraman, Product Manager, Projectworks

When will budgets change?

The new pricing and budget workflow will be pushed live to all Projectworks users on 14 September 2025 NZST / AEST (13 September 2025 ET / PT / BST).*

You won’t need to turn on any features to access the upgrade; it will be automatically available to you.

Do we have to migrate our existing projects?

Your existing projects will be automatically migrated as part of the upgrade. You won't need to do anything for this migration to take place, but depending on what features you use (for example, the Projectworks API or our BI views), and how your projects are structured, you may need to review these changes after migration.

In some cases, particularly if your projects previously used the Timecode Hourly Rate (hours × rate) mode, we will add placeholders or set a Top-Down fee on your Timecodes. This will ensure that your budget amounts and allocated hours are preserved during the migration, with no impact on your downstream workflows.

Will you be offering re-training sessions for my team to learn this?

No, as the changes will simplify the budget-building process. As always, any technical issues can be reported to support@projectworks.com.

Can we go back to the old user interface once the changes have been rolled out?

No. This is a mandatory, one-time upgrade for all tenants that will not be reverted.

*Note that this release date may be subject to change.

More resources on budgeting

Help article: More detailed information on changes to budgets, APIs, and BI views

Managing your project budget

Managing project costs and staying on budget