The Short Answer
Open a project, go to the Finances tab, and make sure you're on Expenses. In the top right of the expense list you'll see three buttons: Table, Scope, and Vendor. Click Scope.
Instead of a flat ledger of everything you've spent, you get your scope — the same lines your client signed off on — with what you've committed and paid stacked up underneath each one. It's the fastest way to answer "am I still on budget for the plumbing?" without adding up receipts in your head.
Why This View Exists
When you priced the job, you told your client a number for each piece of work. Twenty thousand for plumbing, say. Everything you spend on plumbing has to roll up to that twenty thousand, or you're quietly losing money on the job.
The regular expense table is great for finding a particular receipt, and the Vendor view is great for seeing who you're paying the most. Neither one tells you how much room you have left on a line you already sold. The Scope view does exactly that, one row at a time.
Before You Start
The Scope view is only as good as the links between your expenses and your scope. When you log an expense, connect it to the scope line it belongs to — either by adding it straight from this view (more on that below), or by picking a scope item in the expense form.
Anything you haven't linked still shows up. It just lands in a bucket at the bottom called Unassigned, so nothing ever disappears on you.
A couple of practical notes:
The Scope view lives inside a project. On the global Finances page you'll only see Table and Vendor, because a budget only means something in the context of one job.
It's available on both opportunities and started projects, so you can watch the budget from the moment you have a scope priced.
It's a web feature — you won't find it in the mobile app yet.
Like everything else on the Finances tab, it's visible to Owners, Admins, Managers, and Superusers.
How to Read the View
1. Find it
Project → Finances tab → Expenses → the Scope button in the view switcher at the top right.
2. Understand the rows
The list mirrors your Scope tab, three levels deep:
Top level is your groups and any scope items that don't sit in a group. Each one is prefixed with the subproject it came from, so a row reads something like (Bathroom Remodel) Demolition. That prefix matters — plenty of jobs have a "Demolition" group in more than one subproject, and without it you couldn't tell them apart.
Second level is the items inside a group.
Third level is the expenses themselves, tinted so they read as detail rather than budget.
Everything opens expanded the first time you land on it. Click any budget row to collapse or expand it. Click an expense row and its full details open in a drawer, exactly as they would from the regular table.
The small link icon beside a budget row is a signpost, not a button — hover it and it tells you where in your scope that line actually lives, spelled out as subproject, then group, then item.
3. Read the columns
Budget is what you priced that line at, with your markup taken out. That's deliberate: markup is your profit, not money you get to spend on the work.
Budget Remaining is that budget minus everything billed against it. When it goes negative it turns red, which is your cue that the line is underwater.
Billing Amount is what you've committed to spend — the amount saved on the expenses underneath, whether or not you've cut the check yet. Beside it sits a small percentage pill showing how much of that row's budget you've used. It's green while you're inside the budget and red once you pass 100%.
Contracted is the value of subcontracts tied to those expenses, counting only work you've actually awarded to a vendor. A subcontract still out for bids isn't a commitment yet, so it stays out of this number.
Paid is money that's genuinely gone out the door — the payments you've logged. If you haven't logged any payments against an expense, it counts as zero while the expense is Open, and as the full billing amount once you mark it Paid.
Everything rolls up the way an accountant would expect. An item's numbers sum into its group, and each group stands on its own budget.
4. Read the Vendor column
On an expense row, you get the vendor's name and photo. On a budget row, you get a count instead — 1 vendor, 3 vendors, or No vendor — because a single scope line often ends up spread across several suppliers.
There's a third possibility: Vendor Pending. That means you haven't picked a vendor yet, but there's a subcontract attached that's out for bids with at least one sub invited. It's a useful in-between state — the work is in motion even though nobody has won it yet, and it saves you from creating a second subcontract for work you've already sent out.
5. Add an expense right where it belongs
Open any budget row and you'll find + Add new expense at the bottom of its children. Click it and the new-expense form opens with that scope line already attached, so the expense lands in the right bucket without you hunting for it in a dropdown.
If you change your mind, you can unlink the scope line in the form, or swap it for a different one. And + Add new expense inside the Unassigned bucket does the opposite — it opens the ordinary form with nothing pre-attached.
6. Watch the budget while you type
Any expense that's linked to a scope line now carries a small budget panel in its form, just above the amount:
Budgeted — the scope line's price, markup excluded.
Budget Remaining — what's left on that line, in green if there's room and red if there isn't.
Used by this expense — how much of the line this one expense eats up. When you're creating an expense this stays blank until you type an amount, then fills in live.
On a manual expense you'll also see a percentage under the amount field: % of Budget, and — when the linked subcontract has a price on it — % of Committed. Handy for catching a bill that came in above what you agreed.
A Few Things Worth Knowing
The percentages are about commitment, not cash. The pill next to Billing Amount measures what you've committed against a line, not what you've paid. A row can read 100% with nothing paid out at all. Paid money lives in its own column, and the total at the very bottom of the list is a paid total.
Every level is measured against its own budget. A group's percentage compares the group's total billing to the group's budget; an item's compares the item's billing to the item's budget. So a group can look comfortable while one item inside it is already over.
Unassigned isn't an error. Overhead, expenses imported from QuickBooks before you'd built the scope, one-off purchases that don't map to a sold line — all of that is perfectly normal and it all collects at the bottom. If something in there should be tracked against a budget, open it and link it to a scope item; it'll move up on the next refresh.
Blank budget cells on expense rows are intentional. An individual expense doesn't have a budget of its own. It draws down the budget of the line above it, which is why Budget and Budget Remaining are left empty on those rows.
You can't edit your scope here. This view is a readout. To change a price, a description, or the structure of your scope, head to the Scope tab.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why doesn't the Budget column match the price my client saw?
Because it excludes markup. The client's number includes your margin; the budget is the cost you have to work within. If they matched, you'd have no profit left in the line.
I don't see the Scope button.
Check that you're inside a project rather than on the global Finances page — the Scope view is project-only. If you're on a project and still don't see it, you may be on a role that doesn't have access to Finances at all.
Why does a line say "3 vendors" when I only remember using one?
The count is drawn from the expenses sitting underneath that line, so multiple expenses each carrying a vendor will each be counted. Open the row and the expense list underneath will show you exactly who's on there.
A row shows Vendor Pending. Did I forget to assign someone?
Not necessarily. It means there's a subcontract attached that's out for bids and nobody has won it yet. Once you award it, the vendor's name replaces the placeholder.
Why is my Contracted number lower than the subcontracts I've sent out?
Only awarded subcontracts count. Bids that are still open aren't commitments, so they're excluded until you assign the work.
How do I get an expense out of Unassigned?
Click it, link it to the scope item it belongs to, and save. It'll appear under that item the next time the view loads.
Can I see this across all my projects at once?
Not yet. Budgets are per-job, and stacking every project's scope into one list gets unreadable fast. If a portfolio-wide budget view is something you'd use, tell us — that feedback is what decides whether we build it.
Is this on mobile?
Not yet. For now it's web and desktop only.