Allocating budgets and resources to projects in VOGSY

First published on November 15, 2024 , updated on September 12, 2025

Why budgeting and resource allocation are important

Effective budgeting and resource allocation are vital to successful project delivery. Here's why:

Budgets provide a financial roadmap outlining how much money you expect to spend and earn.
They help you track expenses, ensuring you stay within limits and avoid overspending.
Resource allocation ensures the right people are available at the right time.
Budgets should reflect the financial agreements made with your customers, including costs, payment terms, and contingencies.
Budgets help you anticipate potential financial risks and allocate resources accordingly.
Effective budgeting and resource planning increase your chances of delivering a project on time, on budget, and to your customer's satisfaction.

Key takeaway: Budgeting and resource allocation are not just about numbers; they are crucial for planning, controlling, and successfully executing your project while meeting your financial commitments to your customers. In VOGSY, this is visually represented using weather icons:

A 'sunny' icon signals the project is on track.
'Cloudy' or stormy weather means things deviate from the plan.

weather icons used in VOGSY indicate how well things are going

Work breakdown

The VOGSY work breakdown structure (WBS) defines projects consisting of one or more deliverables. Per deliverable, you create a budget composed of activities and costs. Activities and costs are the centerpiece of project cost and sales calculations. Employees and contractors are allocated and planned for activities.

Activities budget

You can set up a budget in two ways: top-down or bottom-up.

Top-down budgeting

In a top-down budget, the activities are calculated using that activity's default cost and sales rate. A budget can have multiple activities, each with its own cost and sales rate.

If needed, you can deviate from the default cost and sales rate for the calculation in a project.

Bottom-up budgeting

In a bottom-up budget, the cost and sales rate depend on the cost and sales rates of the employees you allocate to this activity. When you allocate multiple employees to the activity, the cost and sales rates in the budget are the average of all allocated employees.

Employee allocation

Whether you calculate the budget top-down or bottom-up, allocating employees is the last step in completing the project's setup.

VOGSY can recommend the best employees for each activity by matching required skills and seniority levels.

For each resource, you can:
- Define the number of hours within a specific period
- Plan workdays in detail during that timeframe

Interested in how VOGSY distributes hours across the project timeline?
Download this example PDF for a detailed breakdown.

With this button, you can configure a specific day pattern for the employee allocation.

Set specific days while allocating a resource For each day of the week, it is possible to define whether this employee should be allocated. Besides the day, you can set the exact number of hours that this employee should work on this day.

Next: project and resource planning

You're ready to begin managing your project once you've set up your budgets and allocated resources.
Continue by exploring the project planning and resource planning.

These articles guide you through day-to-day execution and scheduling using the structure and data you’ve created.