Get started

1. Add the board view

Open a board where your team logs time. Click + next to the board views, choose Apps, then Burnrate. You can add the view to as many boards as you like; budgets are shared across the account.

2. Authorize once

The first time, an account admin clicks Authorize as admin. This lets Burnrate read time on boards and send alerts for the whole account. Other users don’t need to do anything.

3. Tell Burnrate where the time is

Managers open Setup → Time on this board. Burnrate uses every time tracking column on the board by default. You can also: - Hours log: use a numbers column with hours, a people column (who) and a date column (when), if your team logs hours that way. - Billable: pick a status, dropdown or checkbox column and the labels that mean “not billable”. - Estimate: pick a numbers column with estimated hours to get an estimate at completion. - Write-back (Pro): pick numbers columns for each item’s cost and billable amount.

Time logged on subitems counts towards the parent item.

4. Set your rates

In Setup → Rate card, add a default cost rate and billing rate. Add roles (Designer, Developer) and people with their own rates if they differ. Each rate has a start date: when a rate changes, add a new line from the new date, and earlier time keeps the old rate. A person’s rate comes first, then their role’s, then the default.

5. Create a budget

On the Budgets tab, click New budget: - What it covers: this board, other boards, or only some groups or items (for example items where Client = Acme). - Amount and/or hours, and the period: once, every month or every quarter. - Rollover (Pro): for a monthly or quarterly retainer, carry unused hours or money into the next period. - Billing: none, the rate card’s billing rates, or one fixed hourly rate. - Warning level (80% by default) and watchers, who get the alerts.

6. Follow up

Each budget card shows its health, what is used and left, and the forecast. Open Reports for a breakdown by person, item, month or client, and download it as CSV. Open a budget to see what is billable and not yet invoiced, and use Mark as invoiced to record what you billed, for the current period or the one before.

Who sees what

• Managers (account admins and the people listed in Setup → Settings) see and edit everything.
• Other members see the budgets and reports for boards they can open, with hours, costs and health, but without rates, billing, margins or time per person.
• Guests and viewers don’t see budget data.