Core concepts
Budgets
Every project in Keikaku is structured using budgets. Each budget has a name, amount and color and specifies segments which will later contain your orders.
Segments and buffer
To create a budget you need to pick a name and set its overall amount. Additionally you need to specify at least one segment. Every budget is divided into several segments which also have a name and an amount. They will contain your orders later. For example, you might have a budget "Audio" with the segments "Music" and "Sound".
Some rules apply when setting segment amounts:
- The combined amounts of all segments cannot be higher than the overall amount of their budget.
- Existing orders and invoices might prevent you from decreasing a segment amount later.
If you do not fully allocate the overall amount for a budget to its segments that leftover amount will remain as the buffer for that budget. If an invoice action requires an additional amount to be available in a segment, you may take that missing amount from the buffer of the budget.
If your needs are very small...
If you are on the "Freelancer" plan but still want to divide orders into multiple projects, choose a more general project name and use budgets for your actual projects.
Visibility
Budgets and segments are visible to everyone by default. However, you can also hide a budget or segment by setting their visiblity to "Hidden".
Hidden budgets and segments will not show up when creating an order and certain users cannot see them while exploring the "Budgets" section of a project.
If a visible budgets contains hidden segments, their amounts will be subtracted from its displayed overall amount for some users. If a user is allowed to view hidden budgets and segments, a small icon will indicate their restricted visibility.
Utilizing hidden budgets and segments
Hidden segments are a great when defining additional buffers which you may unlock later, while hidden budgets are useful for planning out future project milestones without having users accidentally create orders in them.
Moving amounts or segments
If you have multiple open budgets created in your project you may always move amounts from one budget buffer to another.
You may also move entire segments including its orders. You cannot move the last segment of a budget, as each budget needs to have at least one segment.
Closing a budget
If a budget is now longer needed, you may close it to prevent the creation of additional orders for this budget. You cannot close budgets that contain open or completed orders.
Closing a budget will remove the remaining amount from that budget. The segment amounts will be adjusted to match the combined costs of their orders and the budget buffer will be removed.
If you later decide that you want to use a closed budget again, you can always reopen it.
Editing a reopened budget
Do not forget to increase the amount for a reopened budgets and its segments to enable the creation of additional orders.
Deleting budgets and segments
Budgets and segments can also be deleted, but only if they do not contain orders. So take your time when planning them before you finally start creating orders.