7pace Timetracker's Budgets Page

Introduction

Budgets Add Value

From an economic perspective, the reporting or billing of efforts spent in development does not always follow sprints, releases, or product backlog items. Your team members create a large number of worklogs every minute of every day, and it can be challenging to manage these worklogs. Additionally, you may want to bill only specific hours to a client or report those internally.

The Budgets page allows you to simply and easily create unlimited budgets, so you can then assign the tracked time you want to those budgets. You can include or exclude items from a budget or assign a budget to an object, such as:

• Releases

• Iterations/sprints

• Items like PBIs, bugs, impediments

• Work Items

• Single Worklogs

When you assign a budget to any of the above objects, the child objects also inherit that budget. If you assign a different budget to one of the child objects, the parent inheritance is then broken, and the new assignment of this item is inherited by its children. Therefore, if you assign a budget to a release, all work that is tracked to items in that release will be counted in that budget, automatically and instantly. If you want to set an exception for a child item, for example, a product backlog item in a sprint, just assign a different budget to that child item (like "Do Not Bill").

The Budgets page components

Adding a new budget

1. On the 7pace Timetracker menu bar, click Budgets.

2. In the left panel, click the New Budget button.

The Budget dialog box is displayed.

3. In the Budget Name field, enter the name of the budget.

4. In the Planned Hours field, enter the number of hours planned for the budget.

5. (Optional) In the Comment field, enter any additional information you want to add to the budget.

6. Click the Save button.

Including iterations or work items in a budget

Once a budget has been created, you can directly add objects like iterations or work items to the budget in the Included section of the page. The items in the Included list indicate that for all these items, any tracked time is logged to and included in that budget. The Tracked field at the top of the page then displays the total time tracked for all included items in that budget, be it an entire iteration, just specific work items, or even a single worklog. 

1. In the far left pane, click the budget name to which you want to include specific iterations or work items. 

The budget details are displayed in the right pane.

2. In the middle-right Included section of the page, click the Add button for Iterations or Work Items that you want to include in the budget.

INCLUDE ITERATION IN BUDGET dialog

In the INCLUDE ITERATION IN BUDGET dialog box, click the Select Project drop-down list and select a project.

Click the Select Iteration drop-down list and select the iteration/sprint that you want to add.

INCLUDE WORK ITEM IN BUDGET dialog

In the INCLUDE WORK ITEM IN BUDGET dialog box, enter the work item ID or title in the Search for Work Items text field/search box.

In the resulting list, select the work item that you want to add.

Click Ok. 

Excluding iterations or work items from a budget

You can also specifically set iterations and work items to be excluded from certain budgets. 

The items in the Excluded list indicate that for all these items the tracked time is not calculated in that budget. The Tracked field at the top of the page does not include the tracked time for any of the excluded items in that budget. Usually, you can use the excluded items list to remove certain items from the budget. For example, you can include a parent iteration or a PBI in the budget but want to exclude certain iterations or child work items from the budget.

1. In the left pane of the Budgets page, click the budget to which you want to exclude specific iterations or work items.

2. In the far-right Excluded section of the page, click the Exclude button for iterations or work items that you want to exclude from this budget.

EXCLUDE ITERATION FROM BUDGET dialog

In the EXCLUDE ITERATION FROM BUDGET dialog box, click the Select Project drop-down list and select a project.

Click the Select Iteration drop-down list and select the iteration that you want to exclude from the budget.

Click the Select Another Budget drop-down list and select another budget to which the iteration is to be assigned.

EXCLUDE WORK ITEM FROM BUDGET dialog

1. In the EXCLUDE WORK ITEM FROM BUDGET dialog box, enter the work item ID or title in the Search for Work Items dropdown.

2. In the resulting list, select the work item that you want to exclude from the budget.

3. Click the Select Another Budget drop-down list and select the budget to which you want to exclude the selected work item and click Ok.

Adding individual worklogs to a budget

You can assign budgets to one or many worklogs to override the inherited budget. You can only do this on the Times Explorer page.

1. On the Times Explorer page, check/select every worklog that you want to assign to a specific budget or to a budget that is different from the inherited budget.

Note that additional menu options display/are enabled, including Assign Budget, Billable, Change Activity Type, and, Delete. 

2. Click the Assign Budget button.

3. On the resulting popup dialog, select the budget to which you want to assign these worklogs, and then, click the Assign to Selected button.

Now, when you go to the Budgets page, these worklogs are displayed under the Included - Time Tracks section.

Adding a budget from the work item form

1. Open the work item form and click on the 7pace Timetracker tab.

In the upper-right corner, you can see Budget information. In this example, this work item task has inherited the budget from its parent user story. 

2. Click the Budget dropdown.

All budgets that have been created from the Budgets page are displayed as options. 

3. Click a different budget.

Page refreshes, confirmation message displays, and newly-assigned budget displays.

4. Navigate to Timetracker’s Budgets page and click the budget name to which you just assigned the work item. 

The work item now displays within the budget's Included section.

Editing a budget

1. From the list of budgets on the left panel of the Budgets page, select the budget that you want to edit.

2. On the toolbar on the right panel of the page, click the Edit button.

The budget CREATE/EDIT dialog box is displayed.

5. Change the values in the required fields.

6. Click the Save button.

Opening and closing a budget

On the Budgets page, beside each budget in the list, the icon indicates that the corresponding budget is open. The icon indicates that the budget is closed.

1. If you do not see any closed budgets, click the Show closed icon () on the toolbar.

2. On the toolbar:

• Click the Open button to open a closed budget.

• Click the Close button to close an open budget.

The icon and the color of the budget name changes according to the action that you perform.

Deleting a budget

1. From the list of budgets on the left panel of the Budgets page, select the budget you want to delete.

2. Click the Delete button. 

A confirmation dialog box is displayed:

3. Select the Delete button again.

The page refreshes and the budget is deleted.

Exporting worklog details from the Budgets page

You can export worklog details from the Budgets page. By default, 7pace Timetracker exports these time details in the form of an Excel file.

1. On the 7pace Timetracker menu bar, click Budgets.

2. In the left pane, click .

The EXPORT TIME REPORT dialog box displays. 

3. Click in the From field and select the start date from when you want to export the worklogs.

4. Click the To field and select the end date up to which you want to export the worklogs.

5. (Optional) Select one of the following options to export your worklog details:

• Add the sum of effort/story points to topmost parent items

• Group identical data for the same work item ID by dates

• Include Billable and Billable Hours columns in the Export

6. In the Projects list, check the projects for which you want to export the worklogs.

7. Click the Get Report button.

The report is downloaded as an Excel file with extension .xlsx. 

Add sum of effort/story points to top-most parent items

When you select this option, 7pace Timetracker first adds the effort/story points of all child work items to the effort/story points of the respective parent work item and then exports the work items. With this calculation, the exported Excel file displays the effort/story point details as the total of the effort/story points of the parent work item and all corresponding child work items.

Timetracker also adds a new column—Top Work Item Story Point—to the exported Excel file. This column displays the total number of effort/story points of all child work items and their parent work item.

If you do not choose this option, Timetracker separately exports the worklog details of the parent and and child work items.

Exported Excel file without selecting this option

The exported Excel file only contains the Parent Work Item Story Point column and not the Top Work Item Story Point column. The Parent Work Item Story Point column displays the efforts/story points of all work items.

Exported Excel file with this option

The exported Excel file contains the additional Top Work Item Story Point column. This column displays the total of the efforts/story points of the parent work item and all corresponding child work items.

Group totals of all worklogs with the same work item ID together per calendar day

If, on a particular date, you work on the same work item at different times during the day, 7pace Timetracker separately records each time you work on that work item and for how long. 

When you select this option, 7pace Timetracker exports your worklogs by grouping the time of the work item that you tracked on a particular date, but at different times on that date, together. The exported file displays the work item only once, with the date and time details grouped into the Record Date column. In the Excel file, the Tracked column displays the total time tracked for the same work item at different times.

When you export your worklogs without selecting this option, the Excel file separately displays the date and time details of the same work item, tracked at different times during that date, in separate rows.

Exported file without selecting this option

The exported Excel file contains separate entries for the same work item. The Start, End, and, Tracked column display the worklog details separately for the same work item.

Exported file with this option

When you select this option, the exported Excel file contains the Record Date column instead of the Start and End columns.

Include Billable and Billable Hours Columns in Export

Checking this option before you export worklog data populates your resulting Excel file with the Is Billable (TRUE or FALSE) and Billable Period Length columns included. On the Times Explorer page, you can select certain worklogs and mark them as Billable. Then, when exporting on the Budgets page and choosing this option, those marked as Billable are now shown as TRUE in the corresponding column with the time included.

Related articles

• Times Explorer Page Overview

• Iterations Page Overview