What is a Budget?

A Budget is Splinde's working file for one estimate: a tree of Sections and Cost Items priced in a single currency, with a status, one Main version plus any scenarios you add, and at least one Offer Document that turns it into something you can send. It's what a producer actually builds and works from day to day.

What it's for

A Budget holds every line of a production estimate in one structured place, with a running total that updates as you build it, so the numbers, the chapters they sit in, and the documents sent to a client all come from the same source.

How it works

Structurally, a Budget is a tree: Sections nest and contain Cost Items, so it can be as flat or as layered as the job needs. One Budget Currency applies across the whole Budget, though a single line's Fee can still carry its own currency, converted automatically into the total. A Budget also carries a status, In Progress, Approved, Cancelled or Archived, set from the Info tab in the sidebar.

Every Budget starts as Main and can grow scenario columns beside it, useful for comparing a four-day and a five-day version of the same job without touching the original numbers. A Budget also holds its own Variables, named values reused across its own lines, and always carries at least one Offer Document, the client-facing page built live from its numbers.

You can start a Budget from scratch, from a Budget Template, from Explore a Demo, or by importing a SCoPE Excel file; each path asks for a name and a Project before the budget is created. Both Duplicate Budget in the editor header and Duplicate on a budget's row menu on All Projects do the same thing: they copy the whole Budget family, Main and every Scenario together, into a new, independent Budget. Neither control extracts a single Scenario on its own.

How it fits with the rest of Splinde

A Budget lives inside a Project, inside a Workspace. Sections and Cost Items are what you build inside it; References, AddOns, Labels and Smart Subtotals all operate on that same tree; Offer Documents read from it live, and Scenario Management lets it carry variants beside Main.