Track Project Cost, Budget and Profitability in Jira
Finances turns logged hours, salaries and expenses into the cost and revenue of every Jira project. Spend is checked against the budget while work runs.
What Finances Is
Finances is the part of ActivityTimeline that turns logged Jira hours, salaries and expenses into project cost, revenue, budget and profitability.
Maya logs 5h on WEB-203 Payment step UI
Sarah is paid €6,400 a month, logged hours or not
Added by hand, linked to an issue if you like
Hours, salaries and expenses in one figure.
Budget, spend and forecast on one chart.
Billable hours and contract payments, minus cost.
Every figure opens into its worklogs. Excel takes the rest.
ActivityTimeline is a resource planning, capacity management and time tracking app for Jira. Hours are the worklogs your team logs in Jira or in Timesheets.
About the Timesheets moduleThe Questions Finances Answers
Five questions about any budget, and the screen that answers each.
Cost
How much does this project actually cost?
Labor from logged hours and rates, plus expenses.
Cost from logged timeBudget
Are we within budget?
Spend and forecast against the budget, next to task progress.
Overspend, before it happensInvoice and audit
Can we invoice or audit the details?
Every cost and revenue line, ready for Excel.
Detailed FinancialSample drill-down from Actual Spend to labor and expenses, then to each person's hours times rate, down to single worklogs, with a switch between spend and revenue.
Project cost
"Project cost is a spreadsheet someone rebuilds from Jira exports every month."
See What Every Project Really Costs
Hours at each person's rate, monthly salaries and the expenses you add. Click any figure to see what is behind it.
Try it on the sample budget
1
Open Actual Spend
Labor and expenses, then the people behind the labor
2
Click a person
Hours times rate, down to each worklog
3
Switch to Revenue
Non-billable hours cost money and bill nothing
Cost from logged time
Every worklog becomes cost at the person's rate, with no exports.
Billable and non-billable
Non-billable hours count as cost and bill nothing.
Hourly or monthly rates
Hourly for most people, monthly for salaried staff.
Rate changes keep history
A new rate starts on a date. Past months keep their figures.
Expenses outside Jira
Add licences, travel or contractor fees, once or every month.
By project, epic or any filter
A budget can follow a Jira project, an epic or a saved filter.
Budget and forecast
"We find out a project is over budget when finance closes the month."
Know You'll Overspend Before You Do
Budget, spend and revenue on one running chart, with a forecast to the end. Task progress shows if the work keeps pace.
Six figures at a glance
Current and remaining budget, actual and forecasted spend and revenue.
A forecast to the end date
Forecasted spend, revenue and profit for the whole budget period.
Spend next to task progress
Most of the money gone for less than half the tasks is a warning you can act on.
Two warning signs on sample budgets: the forecast for Platform upkeep H2 passes its €96,000 cap on 8 Dec, and Juniper Health · Mobile App has 63% of the contract spent for 38% of the tasks.
Platform upkeep H2 is 84% spent today, under its €96,000 cap. The forecast reaches €105,030 and passes the cap on 8 Dec. You see it now, not at year end.
Budget vs Spend for Harbor Retail · Checkout v2 by category, as pies or bars. Non-billable work used 232% of its allocation.
Pie view: unbilled work took a third of the spend. A non-billable hour costs the same salary as a billable one, but no client pays for it. Here non-billable work is 33% of spend against 15% planned, and billable work fell to 55% against 65%. More money goes out, less comes back as revenue. Switch to bars to see it in dollars.
Budget vs Spend
"We planned 15% for non-billable work. Nobody knows what we actually spent on it."
Budget Allocations Against Real Spend
Split a budget into allocations by category, position, person or epic. Then compare each one with real spend.
The plan next to reality
Two charts side by side: your allocations and the real spend.
A status on every row
On track, fully spent or over budget, with the amount left.
Spend you did not plan for
It gets a row of its own, so the totals always add up.
See Finances on a Demo Budget
We walk you through a budget like the ones on this page. Bring your questions on rates, fixed-price work and internal budgets.
Pricing models
"We bill by the hour but don't know our margin per client until we invoice."
Price Work the Way You Sell It
Each budget follows how the work is sold: by the hour, at a fixed price, against a cost cap, or against product sales.
Chart: revenue above cost on a time-and-materials budget.
Time and Materials
Billable hours at billing rates are revenue. Cost rates set your margin.
Harbor Retail · Checkout v2: margin 24.2% to date, on $40,340 of revenue.
The service agency scenarioChart: contract payments in steps while cost climbs on a fixed-price budget.
Fixed Price
Contract payments are revenue. Every logged hour is cost.
Juniper Health · Mobile App: $72,000 in three payments, margin 10.5% to date.
The fixed-price scenarioChart: cost against the cap on an internal budget.
Internal Budget
No revenue, one cost cap. Salaries count even on days with no worklogs.
Platform upkeep H2: €96,000 cap, 84% spent.
The internal department scenarioIllustration: product sales catching up with development cost.
Product
Development cost against the sales you record, month by month.
Not in the sample company. The chart is an illustration.
The product company scenarioRates in Plain Words
Two rates per person
What each person costs you, and what you bill for their time.
Hourly or monthly
Monthly suits salaried staff and does not depend on logged hours.
Changes start on a date
A new rate starts on a set date, so past months keep their figures.
Rates by type of work
Non-billable work at zero, urgent work at a multiple.
Detailed Financial
"Invoices and audits mean another manual export."
Ready for the Invoice and the Audit
Every cost and revenue line, one row each. Templates give you the invoice list or the expense audit in one click.
Detailed Financial ledger for 1 to 11 Nov, grouped by date, with the Summary, Total revenue, Total cost, Labor cost and Non-Labor cost templates.
Month to date, line by line: 23 lines, $5,455.00 of cost and $9,750.00 of revenue. Pick a template to filter it.
The Add dialog: a $600 usability test panel expense on 4 Nov, in Third-party costs, linked to Jira issue WEB-205.
Total revenue for the invoice
Only billable hours and revenue items, for the dates you pick.
Non-Labor cost for the audit
Licences, travel and contractor fees, without the hours.
Add what Jira doesn't know
Expenses and revenue, once or recurring, linked to an issue or a person.
Finances prepares the figures. Your accounting tool sends the invoice.
CapEx vs OpEx in IT projectsPortfolios
"Leadership wants one number across all projects, clients and currencies."
One View Across Every Budget
Several budgets, one currency, one total. A health number you set shows if money moves faster than time, tasks or estimates.
Budgets in other currencies, converted
One conversion rate per currency, shown next to each budget.
Switch a budget off
Totals, the health number and the table follow.
A health number you set
Choose the two measures it compares and where Healthy ends. Excel takes the table to the board pack.
Portfolio Delivery and platform 2026: three budgets in two currencies, each with an ON/OFF switch, and a health number for the whole portfolio.
Three budgets, two currencies, one view. Euros are converted at 1.15. Platform upkeep has no revenue, so profitability drops below zero. Switch it off, or open the health settings.
Where Finances Fits
Finances is the last step: the time your team plans, logs and approves becomes cost and revenue.
1
Plan
Planner
Every person's and every team's Jira work on one timeline.
Open Planner
→
2
Track
Workspace
Each person sees their week and logs time in seconds.
Open Workspace
→
3
Approve
Timesheets
Review, approve and lock the time your team logs.
Open Timesheets
→
4
Analyze
Reports
Forecast capacity and compare planned with actual.
Open Reports
→
5
Budget
Finances
Turn logged time into cost, revenue and margin.
You are here
Questions About Finances
Answers about cost, revenue, rates and budgets in ActivityTimeline Finances.
Still have a question?
Contact us through the support portalKnow What Your Projects Cost Before Finance Asks
Start a free trial with Finances included, or book a demo with budgets like these.
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