Before we start our July tip for Tempo Books, we should refresh our memory about Tempo Accounts. Tempo Books and Tempo Timesheets share a system plugin, Tempo Accounts. As mentioned in our May tip, Tempo Accounts was initially part of Tempo Timesheets and redesigned to manage project portfolios in JIRA and make it available for other add-ons. Tempo Accounts is the link between JIRA issues and external systems and is great to group issues from multiple JIRA projects under a common entity. Tempo Accounts has some legacy features only supported by Tempo Timesheets and other new features supported by Tempo Books. To set the budget for each Account there are two different fields under Account configuration. The two different budget fields are a bit confusing giving the legacy features for Tempo Timesheets. Lets take a closer look.
Precise and Accurate Budget Tracking
For Account managers and others responsible for client projects, the budget is the heart of the operation. You have responsibilities towards your client as well as your superiors. To put it in perspective, if an account goes over the budget on average, your organization could take hit on the profit margin. Even though your team members are enthusiastic and want to go the extra mile for the clients, it can get quite expensive. As the lead of the Account you can fight scope creep; the account is expanding beyond its budget, by monitoring the budget in real-time while Tempo Books is converting logged hours into revenue-generating hours. All expenses are also accounted for in the budget view.
Monthly Budget versus Fixed Budget
The budget configuration is accessible from the Account’s overview. From there the monthly budget and fixed budget is set for the Account.
See also: the Budget video tutorial.
You can configure two budget types. Note that these two budget types do not interact or conflict. For this Tempo Books tip, we will only focus on the fixed budget. The Monthly budget is only supported by Tempo Timesheets, where the monthly budget is a legacy feature from when Tempo Accounts was part of Tempo Timesheets before Tempo Books was fully developed. The fixed budget is fully supported by Tempo Books and reveals the status of the Account’s budget.
By setting the fixed budget for the Account, you are setting the budget for the lifetime of the budget. The fixed budget can be change at all times. If you want to change the currency, the currency drop-down list is under the Price Table (Accounts Overview-Manage-Price Table). The monthly budget can be seen in the Account’s overview but it’s not relevant in Tempo Books. After we’ve set the fixed budget for the Account, we can click on the Budget tab in the right corner as seen above.
The Budget view in Tempo Books:
The Budget view displays the team roles and issue types in the table below the graphic. As well as all expenses that have been logged to issues in JIRA, issues that are linked to JIRA projects and linked to this Account. Tempo Books depicts the monthly status of the Account, with a date navigator on top. Above the graphic the current status (underlined red) of the Account is listed: the month being displayed now (February ´15), the fixed budget, the actual status for the entire Account, and finally whether the Account is over- or under budget. The magical number at the end that is worth monitoring as the budget must be a living part of the process.
Keep management and your clients happy and informed.
