Migrating Project Budgets in Drum: A Guide to Task-Based Budget Management
This document explains the migration process from Drum's previous project-level budget management to the new task-based system. We'll cover how Drum handles various project setups during the migration and how you can adjust your budgets afterward.
Overview Video
Understanding the Change
Previously, Drum allowed budget management at the project level. The budget would decrease as time and costs were allocated to the project. The new version shifts budget allocation to the task level, providing more granular control. This migration requires adjustments to existing projects, and this document outlines how Drum facilitates this transition.
Language Changes in Drum
Drum previously had the following structure, and associated labelling for projects:
Project → Procedures → Tasks
Drum would also refer to "processes" in the settings area, which could be created to act as the building blocks of project templates.
The new structure of projects in Drum is:
Project → Phases (optional) → Deliverables → Tasks
We will propagate these language chages throughout Drum, so that any references to procedures or processes will be replaced with "Deliverables".
This is not a breaking change and the underlying concepts remain the same.
Drum's Data Migration For Projects
This section details common project setups and how Drum migrates them to the new task-based budget system. We've consolidated scenarios one through three that were covered in the above overview video, as they share similar migration outcomes.
Project-level Budgets
These scenarios encompass projects with one or more deliverables, regardless of whether tasks existed previously, and projects that utilized project-level budgets.
Drum's migration process for these scenarios involves:
Task Creation/Allocation: If deliverables lacked tasks, Drum creates new tasks within each deliverable to allocate all existing time and costs. In a scenario where you already have one or more tasks per deliverable, Drum will create a new task above these existing tasks called "DELIVERABLE NAME - Time & Costs".
Create a New "Project Budget" Deliverable: Drum creates a new deliverable named "Total Project Budget." This deliverable contains a single, locked task that holds the total project budget. This task acts as a container for the original project budget and cannot have time allocated to it by default. This ensures continuity in how the total project budget is viewed.
By default, Drum will "lock" all tasks that aren't the newly created task above for time-tracking and cost-allocation purposes.
You can adjust this setting if required, but the advantage of this system is that from a time-tracking perspective, staff will simply see one task per deliverable to allocate time/costs to, just as they did before this updte.
Procedure-level Budgets
Drum previously allowed for process-level budgeting if a project was created from a proposal budget and a specific option was chosen.
For projects that were created in this manner, Drum will:
Create a new task at the top of each existing deliverable with a name matching the deliverable's.
Allocate all existing budget for that deliverable to that new task instead and re-allocate all existing time & costs to that new task.
By default, all tasks other than this newly created task will be "locked" for timetracking and cost allocation purposes.
This maintains the existing concept in Drum where a staff member can only allocate to one concept per deliverable, but can be adjusted using the steps below.
Redistributing Budgets After Migration
While Drum automatically migrates project budgets, you have the flexibility to redistribute the budget across tasks and deliverables to better reflect your project's structure.
Steps to Redistribute Budget
Navigate to the Budget tab for a project.
Select "Edit Original Budget."
Adjust budget allocations across tasks and deliverables as needed. Ensure the total allocated budget does not exceed the original budget.
Delete the "Project Budget" deliverable (created by Drum during migration) if you have distributed all the budget across the other deliverables and no longer need this one bucket of budget.
Important Considerations
Estimated Rates: You can adjust estimated rates to simplify budget calculations when re-distributing budget between tasks.
Budget Accuracy: Ensure that your redistributed budget accurately reflects your project's financial plan.
Support: If you encounter any difficulties or have unique project setups, contact Drum support via live chat or email for assistance.
This migration to task-based budgeting enhances Drum's functionality and provides more granular control over project finances.
While the transition may require some initial adjustments, the long-term benefits will dramatically improve your project management workflow and give Drum significant potential for resource allocation and much, much more.