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Budgets use two capabilities plus a plan gate, and they answer different questions. Keep them apart. Being allowed to set a budget does not mean you can see what the project costs.

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The role matrix

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The capabilities in detail

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budget.manage

Held by Owner, Admin and Project Manager. It mirrors the rate.manage delivery tier. It covers:
  • setting and changing a project’s budget – kind, amount, reset schedule and margin floor
  • adding and removing a task cap
  • reading the budget configuration and the caps list
Finance does not hold it. Budgets are a delivery concern. A Finance user owns invoices, payments and expenses, but the ceiling on a project belongs to whoever runs delivery. Without the capability:
  • The Budget card in project Settings is hidden entirely, not shown as disabled.
  • The Budget cap section on a task is hidden, and the rest of the task panel renders normally.
The Budget card saves through its own button, not the surrounding Save changes. A different mutation under a different capability must never ride along with a general project save – otherwise someone who may edit the project but not its budget would issue a budget write on every save.

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time.viewCost and rate.viewCost

Held by Owner and Admin only. Together these are the cost firewall. A Project Manager sees the budget bar but not the cost figure behind it. The percentage is a progress signal; the amount is internal. Cost fields are omitted, not blanked. The tile grid reflows and no greyed-out placeholder hints at a number you cannot see. The value never reaches the screen at all. The same firewall applies in reports. The Gross profit and Actual cost measures require time.viewCost; Billable value does not.

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The three gates

Capabilities are only one of three checks. All three must pass.
1

Is the app on?

Budgets & profitability must be switched on in Settings → Apps. It requires both Projects & tasks and Time tracking, so you cannot turn it on without them.
2

Do you hold the capability?

Your role, plus any custom role or per-person denial your workspace has configured.
3

Does your plan include it?

Setting a project budget needs the Pro budgets feature. Setting a cost rate needs the Pro profitability feature.
“Turned off” and “not on your plan” are different states. See apps and modules.

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The plan gates, precisely

Two separate Pro features touch budgets, and they do different jobs.

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budgets

Gates setting a project budget. On Free you cannot create or change one.

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profitability

Gates exactly one write: setting a cost rate. Nothing else. So Free does not hide margin. It stops margin being maintained. A new hire cannot be given a cost rate, so their hours cost nothing and the recorded margin quietly stops being true.
Who may see cost and margin is a capability question, decided by time.viewCost and rate.viewCost. It is never a plan question. A Free workspace’s Owner sees margin. A Pro workspace’s Project Manager does not.
See plans and features.

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Example

Northwind Studio, project by project. Priya is the interesting case. She owns delivery on the project and sets its ceiling, but the money the team costs is not hers to see. That separation is intentional.

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Capability is not scope

budget.manage says you may manage budgets. It does not say which projects. Which projects you can reach is decided by project visibility, which follows your supervision scope. Both have to pass:
  • the capability – may you do this at all?
  • the scope – on this project?
See supervision scope and project visibility.

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Custom roles and overrides

Your workspace can define custom roles and can deny specific capabilities to individual people. Two cautions:
  1. Some capabilities are owner-exclusive and cannot be granted to anyone else.
  2. Some are deny-only – they can be taken away from a person but not added to a role that does not seed them.
Check the role editor rather than assuming any capability can be moved freely. See roles and capabilities.

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Common questions

Budgets are a delivery decision – what the project is allowed to consume. Finance owns invoices, payments and expenses. The two surfaces are deliberately separate.
time.viewCost and rate.viewCost seed to Owner and Admin only. Check your workspace’s role editor before promising it – not every capability can be freely reassigned.
Yes. Utilisation, completion and health are open to any workspace member. Only the cost amount behind them is restricted.
Project managers plus workspace Owners and Admins. The person whose action triggered the alert is excluded.
Yes, any workspace member. Dismissing only hides the row from the in-app list – it never re-arms the alert or recalls an email.
No. Switching an app off hides it. Every budget, cap and alert is still there when you switch it back on.
No. Reading is free. Setting a budget needs Pro.

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Troubleshooting

Roles and capabilities

The full permission model.

Set a project budget

The surface budget.manage unlocks.

Profitability and margin

What the cost firewall protects.

Cost rates

The same firewall applied to people.

Plans and features

The budgets and profitability gates.

Apps and modules

The gate above every capability.