Setting a budget and getting alerts

The contract value is the budget, and you choose the point at which SiteLedger tells you a job is eating it.

The contract value is the budget

SiteLedger keeps one budget figure per job, and that is the contract value you entered when you created it. Labor and materials are measured against that single number. There is no separate line-item budget to maintain.

  1. Click Jobs in the sidebar, then click the job.
  2. Click Edit job.
  3. Under Budget & schedule, set the contract value.
  4. Click Save changes.

Leave the contract value blank and the budget bar does not appear at all, and margin shows a dash. It is the one field worth filling in on day one.

Reading the budget bar

Open a job with a contract value and you get a Budget used card: spend on the left, contract value on the right, and a bar between them. Labor and materials are broken out below the bar so you can see which side is doing the damage.

  • Past three quarters of the contract value, the bar turns amber
  • Past ninety percent, it turns red
  • The same bar appears next to each active job on your dashboard

The bar stops at full when spend passes the contract value. The dollar figures beside it keep climbing, and the margin goes negative, so check the numbers rather than the bar once it is red.

Choose when you get told

The alert threshold is a single slider that applies to your jobs. It starts at ninety percent, which means you hear about a job once nine tenths of the contract value is spent. Contractors who want more room to write a change order move it down to seventy or eighty.

  1. Click Settings in the sidebar.
  2. Open AI Thresholds.
  3. Under Budget monitoring, drag the "Alert when a job reaches" slider.
  4. Click Save changes.

The same page carries labor limits. Under Labor monitoring you can set the maximum daily hours for a worker, between six and sixteen, and turn on a flag for shifts well outside a worker’s normal pattern. That is what catches a missed clock-out before it becomes labor cost on a job.

Pick which alerts reach you

  1. Click Settings in the sidebar.
  2. Open Smart Notifications.
  3. Turn the alert types you want on or off.
  4. Click Save changes.
  • Budget alerts: job expenses cross the threshold you set
  • Profit alerts: a job margin falls below target
  • Timesheet anomalies: unusual hours or a missing clock-out
  • Payment reminders: client payments overdue or pending

Delivery is set on the same page. Push notifications go to the SiteLedger iOS app, the email digest is one summary each morning, and the after-hours setting holds everything except budget and safety alerts between 7 PM and 6 AM.

Still stuck?

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