You can create a budget in multiple ways:

You have the option to either create a budget from scratch or choose from Template, simplifying the process. The list of pre-made templates includes all the budget proposals that you created under the "Templates" brand.

When creating a new budget proposal, you need to insert Brand and Project name. The project name will be temporary, and you can edit it later if needed when creating a project from this proposal (+project button). If you start from project details, this info will be prefilled.

If you want to create new Template budget, simply use brand "Templates". If it doesn't exist yet, you need to go to Clients and Brands section to create a new one.

How to create new brand?

If you haven't created any rate cards yet, you can use the blue "Edit Positions" button to insert the required positions and hourly rates directly in the budget. These positions are then used for assigning tasks and tracking time.

You can also predefine rate cards for each brand in Allfred — either contracted client rates or rate cards tailored to different project types. Learn more about setting up rate cards here.

If the brand already has its own rate card, Allfred applies it automatically. In "Select rate card", you can still switch to any other rate card created for that brand, or to one of the default rate cards.

If the brand doesn't have its own rate card, Allfred automatically applies the rate card marked as "Default" under "Default hourly rates". You can also manually pick any other default rate card from the same dropdown.

If you only need to adjust one or a few rates for this specific budget, you don't have to create a new rate card — use "Edit positions" directly in the budget instead.

Allfred automatically opens a window asking you to enter a conversion rate. You can choose between:

After entering the rate, click "Apply" to confirm. If you click "Cancel", Allfred resets the rate card to one matching the workspace's currency.

If you didnt use rate card in different currency but instead you have created whole budget in your workspace currency, then after completing the budget, select the desired exchange rate in the upper right corner. You have the same two options: custom exchange rate, or the client exchange rate set at brand level. Then check the box "Recalculate current prices to new currency", and press Apply.

Note: regardless of which currency a budget is created or recalculated in, the project overview and statistics are always displayed in the workspace's currency.

The budget is divided into three main parts that creative agencies commonly encounter:

Under each part (budget item), you can list specific activities needed to deliver the service, whether it's your agency work or external costs. Organizing your budget this way gives you a clear overview of all expenses or planned internal work.

Allfred uses know-how sharing of your entire agency, offering suggestions from previous projects. You can edit pre-filled sections as needed.

You can provide a detailed description for each item to ensure your client understands what they're getting.

We price items that are part of our work in two ways:

The way a budget item is priced determines how Allfred works with positions when creating tasks.

⏱ Hour icon (hours allocated to specific positions)

When a budget item is planned using hours assigned to positions, Allfred automatically pre-fills the planned hours and positions from the budget item when a task is created under it.

However, this does not mean the task is fully ready to use:

💲 Dollar icon (fixed price for the entire budget item)

When a budget item is planned as a fixed amount, the task does not automatically inherit hours or positions from the budget item.

All positions that are part of the budget item's budget are available to choose from when creating or editing the task — but they are not added automatically. You need to manually select which positions apply to that specific task:
Task → Create (or Edit) → Positions

If a position you need is missing from the list, it's because that position is not part of the budget item's budget — it needs to be added to the budget first.

Until positions are added to the task, users cannot:

Tip: If you receive a "No position" error while creating a Work expense, check whether the task has any positions assigned - and whether a person is assigned to that position.

For external costs, such as using an external graphic designer or video production, we use the external production section.

The buy price represents the agency's cost, while the price represents the amount charged to the client. The client only sees the Price item, so there's no need to worry about them seeing your actual agency costs.

When pricing multiple units or quantities, use the "Enable unit" and "Enable quantity" buttons to open additional columns where you can enter these values. Allfred will then automatically multiply the result by the Price. Both columns need to stay enabled at all times for Allfred to include them in the calculation.

Note: once you enable the Unit or Quantity column, Allfred automatically fills it in with a default value of 1, not 0 — multiplying the Price by zero would zero out the total, which wouldn't reflect what you're actually pricing. You can change this default value to whatever quantity or number of units you need.

The Media budget section works in a similar way, where you can list the costs of boosting or purchasing media, such as a PR article, OOH etc.

You can also apply discounts to the entire budget sections, duplicate whole sections or repeat them.

Creating detailed, tailored budgets is essential for managing long-term or recurring projects. Allfred allows you to select the type and frequency of repetition for individual budget items, providing greater flexibility and more precise control over your project’s financial scope.

This feature is particularly beneficial for those who are budgeting all-year activities into one project.

When you need to create 12 similar budget items, each differing by the name of the month (e.g., “Social media January,” “Social media February,” etc.), with our new feature, simply select the “Months” type of repetition in the budget, choose the starting month (you can start with July in the middle of the year), and then determine the number of repetitions.

Allfred will then organize all the budget items in the Project Overview logically and chronologically. You can also choose the ‘Numbers’ type of repetitions.

A common mistake occurs when users enter a discount as a negative value on a new line. Tasks or items with negative values can cause issues with proper functioning, so always apply the discount in the designated "Discount" column instead.

To make the "Discount" column visible, click the "Enable discount" icon — it's available in every budget section. Then input an absolute or relative (%) discount.

Discounts can be applied to individual rows, individual budget items, entire budget sections, or the whole budget.

If a contracted fee was set on the rate card used for this budget (at brand level), Allfred automatically applies it to the budget — no action needed.

If no fee was set, click "Enable fee" to open the Fee column, then enter either a relative (%) or absolute fee. The Fee column needs to stay enabled if you want to change the fee value away from the default. When using the automatically applied default fee, you don't need to enable anything — it's applied for you.

Sometimes services or products within one budget need to be priced with different VAT rates. In this case, you can apply multiple VAT rates directly in the budget, and Allfred will carry them over automatically into invoicing.

Agency work: VAT can only be changed at the level of the entire budget item — i.e., the whole section (the budget item plus all its rows). Change it using the "Change VAT" button in the bottom-right corner of the section, next to the button used for setting repetitions or discount.

External production / Media / Royalties: unlike agency work, here you can set a different VAT rate for each individual item, since each item also functions as a separate invoicing line or expense-recording line. Different VAT rates are set using the "Enable multiple VATs" button in the top-right corner of the section title, next to the fee, discount, and quantity buttons. This opens a new column where you can set a different VAT rate for each row.

Depending on the rates you select, Allfred automatically calculates all VAT amounts in the budget summary below.

In the SUM TOTAL row, you can see a summary of all items and each part of the budget. Here, you can also apply an absolute or relative discount, agency fees or change VAT.

The Agency Summary row in Allfred's budgeting tool provides a quick overview of your project's expected gross income. This feature helps you create budgets more effectively and plan your estimated profits more accurately.

How It Works

The Agency Summary row is automatically populated based on the information you input into the budget. It shows the expected gross income for the project, calculated as follows:

Once your budget is ready, you can save it as a draft or final version. The final version can be downloaded and shared, or assigned to a project. You can mark budget as approved internally or by the client.

Your created budget proposals are saved in the Quotes section -> Budgets, where you have an overview of all budgets, templates, and project-synced budgets and Proposals.

Once the client has approved your proposal and you are ready to begin the new campaign, simply create a new project under the associated brand. Allfred will automatically assignes the approved cost estimation with the project.

To create a budget for an existing project, the process is the same except that you start from the Project dashboard, select the desired project, and then go to the Budgets subsection. After saving the budget, it will automatically appear in the listing, and you only need to assign it to the project by clicking on the "Assign to project" box.