Making the Budget

To design the budget of your project, select the Budget tab.

The Budget window

You have a choice between two types of budget:

  • A simple budget: this means you have one (big) list of budget headers and budget costs.
  • A multi-year budget: for every year of the project you can specify costs. Logframer will create a tab page for every budget year, preceded by a Total budget page. You can determine the overall structure of your budget on the Total budget page and this structure will be used on the other pages.

Once you've designed your budget, you can go back to the logical framework and determine for each activity what the cost of the resources will be. For every resource you can list which budget items will be used, and which percentage of the price of each budget item.

In the Budget Details pane you can see an overview of the activities and resources that have used the current budget item and what percentage they have used. This also allows you to see if budget items haven't been overused.
 

Making a simple budget

In the Lay-out toolbar, verify in the Structure section that the Simple budget button is selected.

A simple budget has only one (tab) page and is not split up in different budget years.
 

Creating a multi-year budget

In the Lay-out toolbar, verify in the Structure section that the Multi-year budget button is selected. Logframer will create a tab page for every year of the project. The first page of the budget is the Total budget page.

The total budget page

The structure of a multi-year budget is as follows:

  • You define the different budget headers on the Total budget page.
  • These headings are copied on the pages of the year budgets
  • For each year budget, you add budget items to each of the budget headers.
  • The totals of the budget years are calculated and displayed on the Total budget page

This means that there are common budget headers for the whole of your budget. But within each budget year, you have the flexibility to add any items you want. You can even add additional budget headers specifically for one budget year that you won't (re)use for the other years.

Note that if you remove a budget header on the Total budget page, all the sub-items on the different budget year pages will also disappear.

To make creating a multi-year budget easier, it's best to follow these steps:

  1. Create the structure of your budget with all the headers that must be used for the different budget years in the Total budget page
  2. Fill out the first budget year as much as you can, adding individual items and their costs
  3. Copy the information from the first budget year to the following budget year(s):
    • Click in any cell of the second budget year
    • In the Items toolbar, click on Copy values from previous year (in the References section on the right).
    • Repeat to other years if necessary
  4. Modify where necessary in the individual budget years
     

Working with different currencies

By default, the budget of your project uses one main currency, which you can select in the Preferences dialogue or in the Exchange rates pane. But if the unit prices are in local currency, you can use these numbers and then do an automatic conversion.

Before you can use an additional currency, you must add it to the list of currencies and exchange rates. Then in the budget overview, you have to unhide the Local Currency columns.

Managing currencies and exchange rates

In the Lay-out toolbar, click on the Exchange rates button to show the Exchange rates pane on the right of your screen.

Adding currencies in the Exchange Rates panel

On top of the pane, you can select the default currency for the project. Logframer uses ISO 4217 currency codes.

Use the table below to add additional local currencies:

  • Select the name of the currency in the first column using the drop-down list
  • Enter the exchange rate in the second column. When you leave this cell you will see conversions between your default currency and the local currency.

You can add as many local currencies as you want.

Use local currencies in your budget

In the Lay-out toolbar, click on the Local currency button in the Columns section.

Budget lay-out toolbar

The Currency column will become visible to the right of the Cost/unit column. For each unit cost, you can specify the local/default currency to use. Next you'll find the Total in local currency column and finally the Total cost column with the amount in the default currency (using the exchange rate you set in the Exchange rates pane).

If you use a multi-year budget these additional columns will be visible on the tab pages of the different budget years, but not in the Total budget. All amounts in the Total budget are expressed in the default currency.

Selecting a currency for the cost per unit

Budget templates

To make designing your budget easier, Logframer has a number of budget templates:

  • Direct/Admin cost: very often budgets have two big blocks:
    • the direct costs (working costs) with the actual costs of the activities, the staff costs, investments costs and so on
    • the administration costs (indirect costs): calculated as a percentage of the direct costs and destined for overhead costs of the (head) office.
  • Humanitarian budget templates:
    • ECHO (European Commission Humanitarian Office)
    • DFID (Department for International Development – UK
    • CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency)
  • Budget templates for Development assistance:
    • EuropeAid (European Commission development agency)

If you click on one of the buttons of the Structure section of the Lay-out toolbar, Logframer will prepare the budget template for you. Some of these templates are multi-year templates, while others are simple templates.

Budget lay-out toolbar with overview of budget templates

Disclaimer: Facilidev does not guarantee the correctness/completeness of these templates and their compliance with the legal requirements and/or donor requirements of the organisations and instances mentioned above. These templates are designed as examples to assist you in developing more complex budget formats. Before you use these templates to develop and present your project proposal and financial proposal to any donor, you must verify that it complies to all the (legal) requirements of that donor at the time of your deposit. Be aware that donors may deviate from standard templates in specific cases.

In no case Facilidev or the developer team of Logframer can be held accountable for any failure to obtain donor funding by using these templates or the Logframer software.

Tools: Project Budget

You can print the budget or export it to MS Excel.

You can select which budget years you want to print or export. In print preview, you can also hide or show the duration columns and the local currency column. You also have the option to print the exchange rates in a separate table below the budget.

Print preview of the budget

Overview of necessary resources

For each activity or process you can identify one or more process indicators and specify one or more necessary resources. In the logframe you can see one type of information, but you can switch to the other at any time.

If you scroll down to the Activities section and you see (process) indicators, select the Lay-out toolbar and in the Structure section on the right click on the Resources & budget button.

Resources and budget columns in the Activities section
 

Resources with an indicative cost

For each activity or process, you can specify one or more resources. To do so, click in the empty cell next to the activity (in the Resources column) and describe the resource.

If you merely want to give an indicative cost for this resource, you can click in the cell to the right (in the Budget column) and enter the cost of that resource.

Alternatively, you can work in a more precise way and select items from the budget.

Linking resources and budget

If you want to calculate a more precise total amount for the resource in question, you can use the Resource Detail pane.

Before you can select items from your budget, you (naturally) have to establish your project's budget first.

In the logframe, click on the resource in question. In the Resource Detail pane, you will get the following table:

List of references to different budget items and the percentage of each item's cost that is used for this resource

  • In the Budget items column, select a budget item or heading from the drop-down list. Note: if you have a multi-annual budget, you can only select items from the Total budget page.
  • In the Percentage column, enter the (approximate) percentage of the budget that you will need to use for this resource. You will see the final amount in the Amount column.
  • Alternatively, you can enter the amount in the Amount column and then Logframer will calculate the percentage.

Select a budget item from the drop-down list

Select as many budget items as you want. The total amount will be shown in the Budget column of the logframe. If you've entered an indicative figure there, it will be replaced by the calculated total of the budget items that you selected.

This way you can establish a clear link between your activities, objectives and budget. This will allow you to show for each output how much money you intend to spend. You can do this by printing the Resources table.

 

Tools: the Resources table

The Resources Table is a report that you can print and that gives you an overview per purpose, output and activity of the resources you will need, how much they cost and how they are linked to the different headings and items of your budget.

Resources table report in print preview