Creating a Preliminary Budget with Category or Sub Categories

The Preliminary Budget sub-tab is used to create a quick project budget or a client preliminary budget proposal. Within this section, you can easily include a scope of work description and apply a margin or markup to both category and sub category levels.

Note: This is not a full Quantity Surveyor (QS) document or a final client estimate/quote.

This would be done via the quotes and estimate pages. Preliminary Budget serves as a quick budgeting tool for internal use or to give clients a general cost indication for the project.

To Learn how to create and manage your categories and sub categories from within Preliminary Budget select the help article here.

Creating a Preliminary Budget

You can create a new Preliminary Budget from scratch or upload one using a CSV file via the “CSV Import” button.
Instructions for importing a CSV file can be found in here.  

Select a category to add to your budget by clicking one of the “Add Category” buttons.

An “Add New Category” pop-up will appear.

In the pop-up, choose the relevant category from the “Create as” dropdown menu.

Once this is selected a second box for the Subcategory will appear for you to select. If you dont wish to use Sub Category you can skip this field and move to Amount.

Enter the Amount (excluding GST).

Apply the line-level Markup percentages next, or skip this if you don't want Markup. 

Click Add Category to save and add it to your budget.
You can then keep pressing Add Category and following the same steps to manually create each Preliminary Budget Line.

Note: If you don’t already have your categories set up in RAVE, you can add these as needed by going to your profile dropdown, selecting Branch Settings then Estimate Category, clicking the Add Category button, entering a category name and if necessary a Subcategory, and clicking Proceed.

The new categories will appear at the bottom of the list. You can rearrange them by dragging the hamburger bars to the left of the category name.

As you add each category and pricing line in, you’ll see each line displays it's:

• Category description
• Once a Category is selected a Sub category option
• Scope of works
• Amount excluding markup (and GST)
• The line-level Markup percentage 
• The Amount including markup (ex GST)
• Then a Cancel or Add Category button 

Once saved you'll see a table format with the same information as well as:

• Beside each line is the option to Edit or Delete.  
• Also, it is possible to move the category lines up or down via the double bars to the left of each Category name.
• There is arrows to expand or collapse a category to view the sub category information underneath.

Deleting or Adding a Markup % to Multiple Category Lines 

You can easily delete or add a markup % to multiple category or sub category lines by:

Single or multi select the Names via the check box to the left of each line. 
 This opens an action footer near the bottom of your screen

To delete the selected lines, click the red 'Delete' button

To add a markup % to the selected lines, add a value to the 'Markup %' field and click 'Apply'

To delete markup % to the select lines, clear out the markup % field and click apply

Note: If you have category level only the check box is beside the category name.

If you have subcategories the check box is beside the subcategory name.

Adding a Document Level Scope of Works to your Preliminary Budget 

You can easily add a document level Scope of Works to your preliminary budget by clicking on the “Add Scope” text.

This will open a Scope of Works field where you can enter your desired text, with available formatting options.

To save your Scope of Works, click the “Save” button.

Once added the button will say Edit Scope for you to make changes.

To delete a scope of works client the Edit Scope button, delete/erase the text and Press Save. 

Scope of Works by Category and Subcategory

You can now add a Scope of Works at either the Category level or the Subcategory level as well as document level.

• If your Category does not have any Subcategories, you can select the edit icon to add a Scope of Works for that Category.

• Once you add Subcategories, you can define a Scope of Works for each Subcategory individually.

• Note: You cannot have both a Category-level and Subcategory-level Scope of Works at the same time. If Subcategories exist, the Scope of Works must be defined at the Subcategory level only.

To Generate a Preliminary Budget proposal
 You can create a Preliminary Budget Proposal by clicking the Generate button located at the top right of the screen.

This action will open the Generate Preliminary Budget pop-up window, where you can configure your proposal settings.

There are four different proposal styles to choose from Minimal, Streamlined, Streamlined with Prices and Full. Each style explains what will show when you select them and your previews will changed based on the style selected. 

You can also select whether to display:

• The Document level Scope of Works, and/or

• The Category Level Scope of Works  and 

• Subcategories, with Scope of Works if either are in use within your budget setup.

The preliminary budget preview includes:

• The date and your logo at the top
  

• Your Project Reference and  business details 

• Your client’s details and site address if completed

• Then Budget information based on your selected Style and check box decisions 

• A preliminary budget disclaimer

Rave provides you with 4 proposal style options - selectable via the proposal 'Style' dropdown

• The Minimal style - Displays each category header, Category Line Cost, a sub-total value, the markup dollar value, GST and Total price including GST
• The Streamlined style - Displays each category header and the Total price including GST only
• The Streamlined with Price style - Displays each category header, Category Line Cost, The total GST, and the Total price including GST
• The Full style - Displays each category header, each category line cost price, markup %, price including markup, with the total GST, and the Total price including GST 
  
• If you choose to select to add Sub Categories and or scope of works these will also display depending on the proposal style.

Generate your Preliminary Budget Proposal to Save/Print, or Send to your Client

Once you've included all required category lines and line details, have selected your proposal style, and have chosen whether to include your scope of works or not - you can generate a PDF version of your proposal to save/print, or have it sent directly to your client via their primary email address listed in their Rave client profile. 

Reviewing your Preliminary Budget on the Back Costing sub-tab

Moving over to the project’s “Back Costing” sub-tab, you will notice that the little “Budget” tab allows you to compare your preliminary budget with your actual quoted amount, and with what your purchase orders and bills totals are. As a result, it gives you a really good indication of how your original preliminary budget went versus what you actually ended up spending.  

We dive deeper into the Back Costing reports in the Rave FMS Back Costing sub-tab section here.

Note: If you’ve deleted all of your preliminary budget categories, you’ll have no data to compare in the Back Costing report, and in this case, the Budget tab on this report will be greyed out.