What budgets do
Budgets live under Finance → Budgets on each vessel. A budget is a financial plan for a fiscal period, built from line items that each carry a month-by-month amount (January through December). Lines are tagged as either Expense (cost) or Income (revenue, e.g. charter income or owner contribution), and the app rolls them up into Total Income, Total Expense and Net figures. All amounts display in the vessel's own currency.
Budgets are scoped to the vessel you create them on - the fleet is resolved automatically, so a budget you build here only ever shows on this vessel and never leaks across the fleet.
The dashboard
The Budgets landing page shows four summary cards plus a table of every budget for the vessel:
- •Total Income - summed income lines across budgets that are Active or Approved.
- •Total Expense - summed expense lines across Active or Approved budgets.
- •Net - Total Income minus Total Expense.
- •Active Budgets - the count of Active or Approved budgets currently tracking.
Draft and closed budgets are excluded from these headline figures. The table below lists each budget with its type, period, income, expense, net and status; click a row to open it.
Creating a budget
Use Create Budget (requires accounting write access). Fill in the details:
- •Budget Name - e.g. 2025 Annual Operating Budget (required).
- •Budget Type - Annual, Quarterly, Monthly or Charter Specific.
- •Fiscal Year and Start / End Date - the end date must be on or after the start date.
- •Notes and Assumptions - optional free text.
Budget lines (categories)
The form pre-loads nine standard categories (Crew Costs, Fuel & Lubricants, Maintenance & Repairs, Provisions, Insurance & Compliance, Harbor Fees & Port Costs, Communication & Navigation, Refit & Capital Expenditure, Other Operating). For each line you set:
- •Category - the line name.
- •Section - an optional subcategory used to group lines together on the detail view.
- •Type - Expense or Income.
- •Twelve monthly amounts - the line total is calculated automatically.
Add your own rows with Add Row; the standard categories cannot be removed but custom rows can. You need at least one line, and at least one line must have an amount greater than zero. The footer shows live Monthly Income, Monthly Expense and Monthly Net totals as you type.
Viewing a budget
The detail page shows Period, Total Income, Total Expense and Net cards, then the full line table. Lines are grouped into collapsible Sections (from the subcategory), and you can switch the columns between Quarterly and Monthly views and expand or collapse all sections. Each line is badged Income or Expense.
Actuals vs budget and variance
Once a budget is Approved or Active, the system can compare it against real spend. It pulls the vessel's expenses with a payment status of Approved or Paid that fall inside the budget period, aggregates them by category and month, and computes the variance against each budgeted line. A variance is favorable when actual spend comes in under budget. Only Approved or Active budgets accumulate actuals - drafts do not.
The approval workflow
Budgets move through these statuses:
- •Draft - editable and deletable. Only Draft budgets can be changed.
- •Pending Approval (Submitted for Review) - use Submit for Review from a Draft.
- •Approved - an authorised approver signs it off. You cannot approve your own budget, and a budget must be Submitted for Review before it can be approved.
- •Active - being tracked against actuals.
- •Closed - no further changes.
Approving and rejecting require fleet-level accounting access (account or fleet admin). Reject sends the budget back to Draft and records the reason in the notes.
Editing and exporting
Edit a budget from its detail page while it is still in Draft - saving replaces its line items with the current set. To edit an Approved or Active budget you would need it back in Draft. Use Export to download the budget as CSV, PDF or XLSX, with options to include line details, variance and notes.