How to manage a project budget in the 101 app

Project financial management: what you monitor every day

Project financial management rests on three questions: how much money has arrived, how much has been spent, and what commitments have been made, including work, materials and advances to contractors. If the answers have to be assembled from chats, bank statements and a site supervisor’s memory, the budget becomes a collection of guesses.

In a project-based business, money often passes through many people. The manager sees the result as “we are short of money again”, contractors see their own portion of the work, and the client expects a report and a clear balance. Who is responsible for the figures, the supporting evidence and making sure the amounts reconcile?

The app helps when you record money movements as they happen and link them to a project: incoming payments, expenses, reports from the people doing the work, and confirmations from the manager and client. Financial management then becomes a process with clear rules, reducing the need to chase loose ends every evening. Control begins with the discipline of recording events.

How a project works in the 101 app: income, expenses and balance

A project in the 101 app brings its entire financial history together: incoming client payments, spending on materials and work, contractor transactions, attached documents and comments. The result is reflected in the project balance: how much money is currently available after the recorded transactions.

In practice, you add a project, record an incoming payment, such as an advance, an instalment or payment for additional work, and then record expenses as they occur. The person doing the work reports their spending and completed work within the project, and the manager reviews and confirms it. This creates a shared set of figures for discussions between everyone involved.

A simple example shows the benefit: the client asks for a financial snapshot in the middle of the week. When transactions are recorded in the project, the report uses entries that already exist, without requiring a separate compilation from different files. A project in 101 keeps the financial sequence connected: payment → expense → confirmation.

If you are just getting to know how the service works, start with the About the app section. It helps explain why roles and confirmations matter in 101.

Project budgeting: expense categories and planned versus actual costs without spreadsheets

A project budget remains useful when expenses have a structure. In 101, expense categories provide that structure: you decide in advance how to analyse costs, such as basic construction materials, finishing materials, labour, delivery, tool hire and building services. Each transaction can then be placed in the appropriate category and contribute to the analysis.

Why does this matter for budget management? It makes overspending visible in a specific area of the project. Once you can see it, you have options: pause purchases, discuss the scope again with the client, rearrange the order of work or recalculate the margin for individual stages.

Expense categories also make conversations with clients easier by showing the structure behind the budget. The article Allocating expenses to categories (in Russian) explains categories and how to set up an expense structure in more detail. Classification is the foundation of a manageable budget, and 101 helps maintain it without manually consolidating the figures.

Teams, contractors and spending advances: collecting reports and receipts

Project financial management breaks down when expenses are entered late and without supporting evidence. A typical situation is that a tradesperson buys consumables and sends a receipt photo to a chat. A week later, the report needs to be completed, the receipt cannot be found, and the amount has to be recalled from memory. In 101, the event is recorded directly in the project as it happens, with evidence such as a receipt, photo or comment.

For this to work, responsibilities must be assigned. Team members record their own events, the project manager reviews and confirms them, and the client sees a clear report and balance. Since the information is already in the project, oversight involves fewer repeated requests to send documents, clarify details or recalculate amounts.

If you issue substantial amounts of money for people to spend and account for, read the article on accountable funds (in Russian). It explains why it is important to distinguish between the person who received an advance and the person who has accounted for it. To explore the legal aspects of confirming events, see the article on how the app helps in disputes (in Russian). Reporting discipline develops when each participant has a defined area of responsibility within a shared project.

It is also worth reading about the benefits of the mobile app (in Russian). In project work, entering information promptly often matters more than having an ideal spreadsheet back at the office.

Payments, advances and cash flow gaps: keeping money under control

Managing a project budget means monitoring the project’s available funds and understanding upcoming payments. If you pay contractors in advance and buy materials ahead of time while client payments arrive late, the risk of a cash flow gap becomes an ongoing problem.

In 101, you can see the project balance and the history of incoming payments and expenses. This helps you spot when work is continuing but the money available no longer covers the project’s commitments. You can then act in advance: agree on the next client payment, pause some purchases, change the order of stages or revise the schedule.

Cash flow gaps deserve separate attention because they are almost always connected with project management. The article Cash flow gaps in construction explains their causes and consequences. The earlier you see a funding shortfall in a project, the fewer decisions you have to make in emergency mode.

Profit and analysis: understanding project and company results

When budgets are maintained by project, you gain something that is often missing in project-based businesses: the ability to calculate the result for each site and compare projects using consistent rules. This helps identify which projects generate profit and which mainly create turnover and additional work for the team.

Three reports matter to a business owner: the cash flow statement, the profit and loss statement, and the balance sheet. In project-based work, they help distinguish the money in the bank from actual profit, reveal the cost structure and explain why a project with high turnover can still deliver a weak financial result. For a foundation in this topic, see Three essential reports for a business owner (in Russian).

If you want to monitor project profitability and contribution margin, the article on contribution margin will be useful. For companies with partners and shared expenses, PRO+ is also relevant: it provides the Company Fund and tools for distributing profit between participants. Details are available in the PRO+ offer terms (in Russian). Project analysis turns financial management into a system in which decisions are based on figures.

Introducing the 101 app to manage project budgets

Adoption usually stalls in two places: there is no shared rule for when events must be entered, and there is no clear structure for expense categories. Start with a minimal set of procedures and expand them as you work.

Step 1. Create a project for each site and agree that all money movements will be recorded in the project, without temporary entries in notes or chats.

Step 2. Set up expense categories that match the way you organise work and purchases. At the outset, consistency matters more than perfect detail.

Step 3. Assign roles: who records expenses, who confirms them and who sees the report. Without defined roles, accountability becomes unclear.

Step 4. Introduce a same-day recording rule: when something is bought, paid for or issued as an advance, the transaction should appear in the project with its documents.

Step 5. Once a week, carry out a brief reconciliation: review unverified events, outstanding amounts, the project balance and whether the client report is ready.

If you want to get started faster, you can book a free demonstration through 101-app.com and see how your way of working fits the app’s structure. Successful adoption comes from simple rules and consistency, without relying on exceptional individual effort.

Mistakes that undermine a project budget

Mixing project and company money. When some expenses bypass the project, its balance becomes misleading and management conclusions become unreliable. Link every transaction to a project or to the Company Fund if you use it in PRO+.

Late reporting. If events are entered only once a week, the manager is working with an outdated picture. Project work requires current information, so a same-day recording rule is more effective than penalties.

No expense category structure. When all spending sits in a single category, you cannot break the budget down meaningfully, and overspending becomes visible too late. Start with a basic set of categories and refine it as you go.

No supporting evidence. Without receipts, photos and comments, a report becomes a list of amounts that is difficult to trust. Every event in 101 has a place for supporting evidence; make using it standard practice.

Project financial management depends on repeatable rules: record events, assign categories, confirm entries and review results. Keeping these rules within one service makes the budget manageable. Small compromises undermine a budget, and removing them is easier than undertaking a major effort to recalculate everything at the end of the month.