The Budget Forecast shows projected IT spending for a client based on data already in Lifecycle Manager. It helps you and your clients see expected costs from agreements, initiatives, and hardware replacements across upcoming months, quarters, or years.
This article explains what appears in the forecast, where that data comes from, and how to interpret what you see.
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Who can use this feature?
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What the forecast includes
The Budget Forecast consists of several expandable rows. Each row represents a category of IT spending and shows the total projected cost over the selected reporting periods.
These categories include:
- Contracts
- Initiatives
- Hardware Asset Types based on the asset types configured in Lifecycle Manager.
| Note: If a hardware asset is linked to an initiative, its replacement cost appears under the Initiatives row instead of its hardware type row. This prevents the same cost from being counted twice in your forecast. |
The rows you see depend on your filters and available data. Click any row to view detailed line items contributing to your total.
Where budget data comes from
Forecast values are based on data already in Lifecycle Manager.
- Contract costs come from vendor contracts added manually or synced in from a supported PSA.
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Note: If your forecast looks higher than expected, a newly synced agreement may be contributing costs. To exclude it from your budget and reports, go to the client's Agreements page, open the one you'd like to exclude, and click Hide agreement. For information on managing agreements, see: Agreements Overview |
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Initiatives are included in the forecast if they have budget line items added. Which period an initiative appears in depends on how it's been scheduled:
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Target date
The initiative appears in the month of that date. -
Target month
The initiative appears in that month. -
Target quarter
The initiative appears in the last month of that quarter.
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Target date
For more information on adding budget line items in initiatives, see About the Initiative Detail view
- Hardware replacement costs are based on assets that have reached their replacement age, using the average replacement values from your hardware settings.
| Note: If asset types have replacement age disabled via your hardware settings, they will never be due for replacement and so won't be included in budget forecasts. |
For more information on setting hardware replacement age and values, see Managing Hardware Settings.
Changes made to agreements, initiatives, or hardware settings automatically update the Budget Forecast.
Viewing line items
Each category in the forecast can be expanded to show detailed line items, such as individual agreements, initiative costs, or asset replacements.
Line items are updated automatically based on changes to agreements, initiatives, or hardware settings. The expanded view matches what's shown in the budget report.
| 🎙️ Interested in attending a live Q&A session with our Product Adoption team? Sign up to attend Lifecycle Manager Office Hours and get real-time answers to your questions. |
| Any questions? Reach out to our Lifecycle Manager support team by submitting a support ticket. |
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