A Drum proposal separates the offer you present to your client from the detailed estimate your team uses to plan the work. The Proposal and Project Budget tabs serve those different purposes.
The Proposal tab presents the offer
The Proposal tab contains stages and line items, with descriptions, quantities, prices and tax details. These are the commercial details you prepare for the client.
The proposal can populate a Word document using its template. The exported document’s layout and included information depend on that template.
The Project Budget tab models the work
The Project Budget tab organises work into deliverables and tasks. Tasks can include resource estimates, expense estimates and pricing. This gives your team more detail than a client may need in the offer.
For example, a client might see one line for a survey, while your budget breaks that work into preparation, fieldwork, drafting and review. The detail helps your team estimate the work without requiring the client to read every internal task.
Sync Budget connects the two
Sync Budget takes the current budget and rebuilds the proposal’s stages and line items. Its consolidation method determines how much detail is carried across. It can also include non-budgeted tasks as zero-value lines.
This is an explicit action, not continuous synchronisation. It overwrites the existing proposal stages and line items, including changes made directly on the Proposal tab. Review the chosen level of detail before syncing.
Why the totals can differ
The proposal’s line-item total can differ from the budget’s contract value because they can be edited separately. Drum displays a Budget Difference to make that difference visible.
A difference needs a commercial explanation: it may reflect an intentional client price or an offer that has not yet been updated. It does not, by itself, show whether the underlying estimate is correct.
From proposal to project
An accepted proposal can be converted using either its budget structure or its proposal structure. The conversion preview shows the resulting deliverables and totals. Choosing the source matters when the two tabs have different detail or prices.
See the proposal-to-project conversion reference for the available options, or follow Create and price your first proposal in Drum for a guided first example.