Managing applications
Tracking your awards budget
How to set a budget target and track entry fees across your pipeline so you always know what you've spent and what's left.
Updated
Award entry fees add up. The Budget page keeps a running total across your pipeline so you're not surprised at invoice time and can plan the year realistically.
Setting your annual budget
Go to Budget → Settings and enter your annual budget for award entry fees. This becomes the target line against which all spending is tracked.
Where fees come from
Entry fees come from two sources:
- Award database — Most awards in the database have the entry fee listed. When you add an award to your pipeline, the fee is pulled in automatically.
- Manual entry — If the fee isn't in the database, or if you have a bespoke rate, you can set it manually on the pipeline entry.
Reading the budget page
The budget page shows:
- Total budgeted — the entry fees for every award currently in your pipeline
- Total committed — entry fees for awards you've moved to Applying or Submitted (you've effectively decided to enter)
- Total spent — entry fees for awards you've paid for (move the entry to Submitted to mark it paid)
- Remaining — your annual budget minus total spent
The bar chart breaks spend down by month so you can see whether it's front-loaded (which often indicates the Jan–March award season).
Flagging a fee as paid
When you submit an entry and pay the fee, open the pipeline entry and click Mark as paid. This moves the fee from "committed" to "spent" in the budget view.
Awards with no entry fee
Free-to-enter awards (quite rare) show a fee of $0. They still appear in the budget view so you have a full picture of your pipeline, just without a budget impact.
Budget approval
If your team needs budget approval before committing to an entry fee, the Notes field on each pipeline entry is the place to log the approval. There's no formal approval workflow inside Awardica — use your existing process and log the outcome in the notes.
Exporting budget data
Go to Reports and select Budget report to download a CSV of all entry fees in your pipeline, sorted by status. Useful for finance sign-off or end-of-year reviews.
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