How budgets and margin work
The two numbers on every item
Every item can carry two prices:
- Cost — your trade/wholesale price. Designer-only, never shown to a client, never sent to the portal, never printed on a client-facing PDF.
- Client price — what the client sees and what all budgets and invoices are built from.
If markup is switched off for your studio, client price just mirrors cost automatically — you only ever see one price field. If markup is on, client price defaults to cost × your markup percentage, and you can override it per item as either a flat price or a different percentage. Set this in Settings → Studio.
Margin is your client price minus your cost, and it is designer-only — it never reaches the client portal, client emails, or invoices, in any project.
What counts toward budget
An item counts toward the room and project budget once it's Proposed or beyond (Proposed, Approved, or Declined item statuses all count — see Adding items for the full status lifecycle). Draft items never count.
For a group of alternatives, only the one option flagged in-budget counts — the others are visible but excluded from the total. Swapping which option is in-budget re-rolls the number instantly.
Line total = client price × quantity, converted into the project's currency using that item's stored exchange rate.
Room and project allocation
Each room's budget is set either as a percentage of the project's total budget or as a fixed amount — your choice per room. Mixed rooms (some percentage-based, some fixed) resolve against the project total together; if your percentage allocations add up to more than 100%, Mortar warns you rather than silently letting it slide.
Budget health states
Budgets are colour-coded everywhere they appear — progress bars, rings, and alerts:
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| On track | Comfortably under the room/project allocation |
| Approaching | Over 85% of the allocation used |
| Over | Spend has exceeded the allocation |
Where you see it
- Room Details — Budget Consumed ring ($ / % toggle), Room Budget, Margin, and the "Allocation by Item" bar showing what share of the room each item represents.
- Rooms & Zones (project level) — the project-wide Budget Consumed stat.
- Project dashboard — budget overview, per-room bars, and the margin summary (designer view only).
FAQ
Why does the budget total not match what I expect after editing an item? Check the item's status first — if it's still a draft, it won't count yet. Then check whether it's part of an alternatives group and, if so, which option is flagged in-budget.
Can a client see my margin anywhere? No. Margin (and cost) are architecturally kept out of every client-facing surface — the portal, client emails, and invoices only ever use client price.
What happens to budget numbers if I change the project's currency? Every item's exchange rate is re-snapshotted automatically against the new currency — see Currencies and multi-currency projects for exactly how that works and what can go wrong.