Budgeting in Wrike

Budgeting features are available on Wrike for Professional Services accounts.

• Overview
• Select the Default Currency
• Hourly Rates
• Specify Default Hourly Rates
• Specify Custom Hourly Rates in Projects
• Specify the Project Budget
• Financial Fields
• Grant Access to Financial Details

Overview

Wrike’s Budgeting feature enables you to estimate and track financials across all projects in one place and in real time. It includes:

• Preferred currency setting in your account.
• Default hourly rates for users and job roles and custom hourly rates in projects.
• A set of financial fields that help with planning and tracking the financial progress of your projects by automatically calculating essential financial metrics: planned fees and cost and actual fees and cost.
• Additional user management setting that controls users’ access to financial details.

In combination with other Wrike’s features like job roles, task effort, billable time setting, and time tracking, Budgeting helps you improve projects’ profitability starting from the planning phase and through the execution.

Select the Default Currency

Account admins and owners can select the default currency for Budgeting. On Wrike for Professional Services Enterprise accounts, this right can be revoked from admins.

1. Click your profile image in the upper-right corner of the workspace.
2. Select “Settings.”
3. Click “Settings” in the left panel.
4. Scroll down to the “Default currency” section.
5. Select your preferred currency from the drop-down.
6. Click “Save changes.”

Once you complete the steps, the displayed currency will be changed in all hourly rates and budgeting-related system fields.
Note: The default currency setting is only used to display your preferred currency. It doesn’t convert one currency to another according to an exchange rate.

Hourly Rates

Hourly rates are an essential part of financial planning and tracking of projects. In Wrike’s Budgeting, you can specify:

• Account-wide default hourly rates for job roles and users.
• Project-specific custom hourly rates for job roles and users.

Note: Hourly rates can be specified for all users except collaborators.

Hourly rates are represented by two fields:

• Bill rate: It’s the external hourly cost of a service based on which you bill your client. Use this field to specify the rates you charge your clients with.
• Cost rate: It’s the internal hourly cost of a service based on which you calculate your company’s labor costs. Use this field to specify what an employee or contractor costs you as a business.

All hourly rates are used alongside tracked time and task effort to automatically calculate your actual and planned bill amount and labor costs.
By default, all projects in the account use default hourly rates to calculate the financial data. But if you want to override the default hourly rates for any project, you can specify custom hourly rates for it.

If your project uses default hourly rates and these rates are changed in the user or job role settings, the change will not apply to time entries and task effort that had been added before the rates were changed. This way the calculations based on previous rate values will be preserved and the updated rates will only be taken into account after the rates are changed.
For example, if you update a user’s cost rate, the ​“Actual cost” field​​ will not recalculate any data for the days before the change was made. But it will reflect the update starting from the day you made the edit.

On the other hand, when a project uses custom hourly rates, the custom rates will apply to all time entries and effort, including time entries created and effort specified for dates prior to the change. You can read more about it in the Specify Custom Hourly Rates in Projects section.

Specify Default Hourly Rates

Default hourly rates for job roles

Account admins and owners can specify bill and cost rates for job roles. On Wrike for Professional Services Enterprise accounts, this right can be revoked from admins.

Use default hourly rates for job roles to:

• Estimate the project budget before delivering the statement of work to your clients. The default job roles' hourly rate is used alongside task effort to calculate a project's planned fees and cost. When you assign job roles with specified hourly rates to tasks with specified effort, the planned fees and cost are calculated automatically.
• Apply the same job role's default hourly rate to multiple users who have that role. This way, if you need to change the default rate of these users, you can simply edit the job role's hourly rate, and the users' rates will be updated automatically.

To specify default hourly rates for job roles:

1. Click your profile image in the upper-right corner of the workspace.
2. Select “Settings.”
3. Click “Job roles” in the left panel.
4. Start creating or editing a job role.
5. In the corresponding fields, enter:
   
   • The Bill rate: shows how much you charge your clients
   • The Cost rate: shows how much resources cost you as a business
6. Click “Create” or “Save” to finish the job role creation or editing.

Once you complete the steps, bill and cost rates that you specified in Step 5 will be taken into account for financial field calculations.
Additionally, when you allocate the job role to a user, they automatically inherit the hourly rates from it. But you can later override these rates in the user settings.

Check job role’s hourly rates history

1. Click your profile image in the upper-right corner of the workspace.
2. Select “Settings.”
3. Click “Job Roles” in the left panel.
4. Click the relevant job role.
5. Hover over the bill or cost rate field.
6. Click the round arrow icon that appears on the right.
7. Use the caret icons in the upper-right corner of the edit history pop-up to see previous edits.

Default hourly rates for users

Account admins and owners can specify custom bill and cost rates for users. On Wrike for Professional Services Enterprise accounts, this right can be revoked from admins.

There are two ways of specifying default hourly rates for users:

• Set the user to inherit the hourly rates from their job role. Use this option when all users with the same job role have the same bill and cost rates.
• Set individual hourly rates for the user. Use this option if the user doesn't have a job role or if their individual hourly rates differ from their job role. This way, you override the hourly rates that the user inherits from their job role while preserving the job role itself.

To set individual hourly rates for the user:

1. Click your profile image in the upper-right corner of the workspace.
2. Select “Settings.”
3. Click “Users” in the left panel.
4. Click the name of the relevant user in the user table. Note: You can’t specify hourly rates for collaborators.
5. Scroll down and click the “Edit settings” button in the panel that opens.
6. Under the “Bill rate” and “Cost rate” fields, select the “Custom” option.
7. In the corresponding fields, enter:
   
   • The Bill rate: shows how much you charge your clients
   • The Cost rate: shows how much the user’s work costs you as a business
8. Click “Save changes.”

Once you complete the steps, the hourly rates you entered in Step 7 are applied to the user, and they’ll be taken into account for financial field calculations.

To set users to inherit the job role hourly rates:

1. Allocate a job role to the user.
2. Click your profile image in the upper-right corner of the workspace.
3. Select “Settings.”
4. Click “Users” in the left panel.
5. Click the name of the relevant user in the user table. Note: You can’t specify hourly rates for collaborators.
6. Scroll down and click the “Edit settings” button in the panel that opens.
7. Under the “Bill rate” and “Cost rate” fields, select the “Job role” option.
8. Click “Save changes.”

Mass-actions: Set hourly rates for multiple users

1. Click your profile image in the upper-right corner of the workspace.​
2. Select ​"Settings​​."
3. Click ​"Users"​​ in the left panel.
4. Check the boxes to the left of the relevant users' names.
5. Select ​"Update bill rate"​ or "​Update cost rate"​​ in the panel that opens on the right.
6. Select one of the options in the pop-up:
   
   • ​​"Custom"​​: Additionally here, enter the rate number in the field.
   • ​​"Inherit from job role​​"
7. Click ​"Update​."

Check user’s hourly rates history

1. Click your profile image in the upper-right corner of the workspace.
2. Select “Settings.”
3. Click “Users” in the left panel.
4. Click the relevant user in the user table.
5. Scroll down and click the “Edit settings” button in the panel that opens.
6. Hover over the bill or cost rate field.
7. Click the round arrow icon that appears on the right.
8. Use the caret icons in the upper-right corner of the edit history pop-up to see previous edits.

Specify Custom Hourly Rates in Projects

All account users (except for external users and collaborators) who have the Manager level of access to financial details can access and edit custom hourly rates in projects unless their access role restricts it.

Generally, projects use the account-wide default hourly rates for financial calculations. But you can make them specific for the project by changing the bill and cost rate values or simply converting the existing default hourly rates to custom in project hourly rates.

Specify custom hourly rates for a project

1. Start by using one of the three options:
   
   1. Open the project and click the three-dot menu button in the upper-right corner.
   2. Open the project in Table view and right-click its title.
   3. Open the project’s info panel and click the three-dot menu button in the upper-right corner.
2. Hover over “Financial settings.”
3. Select “Manage hourly rates.”
4. To convert a user’s or job role’s hourly rate to custom:
   
   1. Right-click the bill or cost rate cell on the user’s row.
   2. Select “Convert to custom.”
5. To convert all hourly rates to custom:
   
   1. Hover over the bill or cost rate column’s title.
   2. Click the caret icon that appears on the right.
   3. Select “Convert all to custom.”
6. To convert a user’s or job role’s hourly rate to custom and change it:
   
   1. Double-click the relevant bill or cost rate cell.
   2. Edit the hourly rate value.
7. Click “Save.”

Note: There is no option to edit the ​Bill rate​ column in ​non-billable projects​​.

Project’s hourly rates that you made custom are marked with a dark gray triangle in their upper-right corners, indicating that the bill and cost rates are specific for this project.
Project's custom hourly rates are used non-historically and apply to all time entries and effort, including time entries created or effort specified for dates prior to the change. Calculations in the project’s financial fields won't be historical. So, if you customize hourly rates for a project that's already in progress, all data in the project’s financial fields will be recalculated based on the last values of the custom bill and cost rates that you’ve added, including the data based on time entries and effort added before this change.

Reset projects’ hourly rates to default

If you no longer need the custom hourly rates you entered in a project, you can change them back to default ones.

1. Start by using one of the three options:
   
   1. Open the project and click the three-dot menu button in the upper-right corner.
   2. Open the project in Table view and right-click its title.
   3. Open the project’s info panel and click the three-dot menu button in the upper-right corner.
2. Hover over “Financial settings.”
3. Select “Manage hourly rates.”
4. Right-click the row of the user whose hourly rates you want to reset.
5. Select “Reset to default.”
6. Click “Save.”

Once you complete the steps, all data in the default hourly rates. Time entries and effort will use hourly rates that were active on the dates for which they were added.

Wrike Tip! If you need to reset hourly rates for all users in the project, click the caret icon next to the bill/cost rate column’s title and select “Reset all to default.”

Add or remove users from projects’ “Hourly rates”

Wrike automatically prefills the list of users in the project’s “Hourly rates” to include:

• Users or job roles assigned to tasks in the project.
• Users who added time entries for at least one of the tasks within the project.

You can manually add more users to the list and then remove some of them.

Note: Users or job roles that are assigned to tasks or users who tracked time in this project can't be removed.

To add users or job roles:

1. Start by using one of the three options:
   
   1. Open the project and click the three-dot menu button in the upper-right corner.
   2. Open the project in Table view and right-click its title.
   3. Open the project’s info panel and click the three-dot menu button in the upper-right corner.
2. Hover over “Financial settings.”
3. Select “Manage hourly rates.”
4. Click “Add new” at the bottom of the user list.
5. Select user(s) or job role(s) you want to add.
6. Click “Save.”

To remove users or job roles:

1. Repeat Steps 1–3 from the manual above.
2. Right-click the name of the user or job role you want to delete.
3. Select “Remove user.”
4. Click “Save.”

Specify the Project Budget

All account users (except for external users and collaborators) who have Manager access to financial details can specify the project budget unless their access role restricts it.

You need to specify the budget for each of your projects to be able to track the projects’ financial progress. You can do this in two places:

1. In the project creation window:
   
   1. Start creating a project.
   2. Fill in the “Budget” field.
2. From the Table view:
   
   1. Navigate to the relevant project.
   2. Switch to the Table view.
   3. Locate the “Budget” column.
   4. Fill in the cell. Note: You might need to add the financial fields to the view first. Click the gear icon in the upper-left corner of the table and click the checkbox next to the “Finance” field section.

Wrike Tip! To calculate the remaining budget, create a calculated custom field using the formulas “[Budget] - [Actual fees]” or “[Budget] - [Actual cost].”

Financial Fields

Wrike’s Budgeting provides you with a predefined set of financial fields that automatically calculate projects’ essential financial metrics you can use to plan the projects’ scope and budget and track your profitability.

Enable calculation in financial fields

Note: For projects created before the release of the Budgeting features on October 19, 2020, you need to enable hourly rates to see the calculations in the financial fields. To do that:

1. Start by using one of these three options:
   1. Open the project and click the three-dot menu button in the upper-right corner.
   2. Open the project in Table view and right-click its title.
   3. Open the project’s info panel and click the three-dot menu button in the upper-right corner.
2. Hover over “Financial settings.”
3. Select “Manage hourly rates.”
4. Click “Continue” in the pop-up that opens.
5. Make the changes to bill or cost rates if necessary.
6. Click ​"Save​​."

Important! The planned and actual costs and fees are calculated separately for each task in a project. To see the full sum of these numbers for the project, you need to roll up the data from Actual fees, Actual cost, Planned fees, and Planned cost fields in the Table view.

Field	Available in	Calculation formula	Description
Budget	Table view Project creation window	-	In this field, you manually enter the number that defines the project’s budget.
Actual fees	Table view Timelog view	Actual fees = Users’ time spent * Users’ bill rate Users’ time spent is the sum of all time entries that the user(s) added for a particular task. User’s bill rate is the hourly bill rate that you specify for the user(s) or for their job role.	In the Table view, this field automatically calculates and displays the actual bill amount for each task. Note: Actual fees are not calculated for non-billable tasks. In Timelog view, Actual fees are calculated for each user separately.
Actual cost	Table view Timelog view	Actual cost = Users’ time spent * Users’ cost rate Users’ time spent is the sum of all time entries that a user(s) added for a particular task. User’s cost rate is the hourly cost rate that you specify for the user(s) or for their job role.	In the Table view, this field automatically calculates and displays the actual cost of resources for each task. Note: In Timelog view, the Actual cost is calculated for each user separately.
Planned fees	Table view	Planned fees = Users’ effort * Users’ bill rate Users’ effort is the sum of hours that you enter in the Effort section of each task to estimate how much time it will take the user(s) to finish it. User’s bill rate is the hourly bill rate that you specify for the user(s) or for their job role.	This field automatically calculates and displays the planned bill amount for each task. Note: Planned fees are not calculated for non-billable tasks.
Planned cost	Table view	Planned cost = Users’ effort * Users’ cost rate Users’ effort is the sum of hours that you enter in the Effort section of each task to estimate how much time it will take the user(s) to finish it. User’s cost rate is the hourly cost rate that you specify for the user(s) or for their job role.	This field automatically calculates and displays the planned cost of resources for each task.

Note: If a task is located only in a folder, and it doesn’t belong to any project, then the financial metrics — actual and planned fees and cost — will not be calculated.

Grant Access to Financial Details

Account admins and owners can change users’ access to financial details in the account. On Wrike for Professional Services Enterprise accounts, this right can be revoked from admins.

Financial information is sensitive data that you might not want to share with all users in your account. Wrike’s Budgeting provides a special setting in user management called “Access to financial details,” using which you can grant different levels of access to financial fields to different users. The three levels of access include:

• Contributor: Users with this access level can't view or edit financial data of any projects. They won’t see any financial fields, and any calculated custom field that uses data from a financial field will appear empty for these users. Give this access level to users who just work on a project, e.g., a team member.
• Reviewer: Users with this access level can view financial data for all projects in the account unless their access role in some projects restricts it. But they can't edit the financial details. Give this access to users who need to spectate the project, e.g., an accountant.
• Manager: Users with this access level have complete access to the financial data of all projects in the account. They can view and edit financial details of all projects unless their access role in some projects restricts it. Give this access to users who need to make edits, e.g., a project manager.

Note:

• By default, all regular users and admins in the account have the “Contributor” level of access to financial details.
• The account owner has the “Manager” access level, and it can't be changed.
• External users and collaborators can't have access to any financial data, and the “Access to financial details” setting is not applicable to them.

Change users’ access level to financial details

1. Click your profile image in the upper-right corner of the workspace.
2. Select “Settings.”
3. Click “Users” in the left panel.
4. Click the name of the relevant user in the user table.
   Note: External users and collaborators can't have access to any financial data.
5. Scroll down and click the “Edit settings” button in the panel that opens.
6. Select the relevant access level from the drop-down under “Access to financial details”: Manager, Reviewer, or Contributor.
7. Click “Save changes.”

Access to financial details vs. access roles

Access to financial details is account-wide permission. This means that users with the “Manager” level of access to financial details by default can access financial details of all projects in the account. But if you don’t want these users to have access to the financial data of a particular project, you can achieve that using access roles.

By default, the “Full” access role in a project gives a user permission to view and edit the project’s financial data if they have the corresponding “Manager” level of access to financial details. Other access roles won’t allow the user to manage the financial details.

For example, if a user has the “Manager” access to the financial data in the account, but they have the “Read only” access role in some project, the user won’t be able to view or edit the financial details of that project. At the same time, that user will still have access to financial data of other projects in which they have the “Full” access role.

Note: On Wrike for Professional Services Enterprise accounts, access roles are customizable. So, permission to manage financial details for projects may be included in other custom access roles.

Access roles can only limit users’ access to financial details in certain projects, but they can't expand it. For example, users with the “Contributor” level of access to financial details won’t be able to view or edit financial data of any project in the account even if they have the “Full” access role in them.