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To the right of the bar, you can also set the time step for your budget. Blocks will snap to either month or half-month boundaries when creating grants and adding expenses.
Spendlab’s interface uses several rows of graphs/trendlines to provide an intuitive budgeting experience. Rows are organized into groups for Funding Sources, People, etc.
Add a row by clicking on the + icon at the bottom of any group.
Rename a row by directly clicking on the bold heading of the row itself.
Keep track of your startup funds, grants, donations, and other funding sources with color-coded blocks and trendlines.
Manage how everyone in the lab is being paid.
For example, if a person’s yearly salary is $60,000, selecting per year means that each month in a block represents $5,000. (Even if you don’t drag the blocks across the entire year, each block will still be worth $5,000.)
Adjusting the salary unit does not automatically create a yearly, monthly, or quarterly repeat. You need to create blocks manually to span the duration that the person is working.
Unlike salary and fringe costs, "Other" costs are billed at 100% even when a block uses less than 100% total effort. This is because every lab we talked to said they were responsible for covering either all or none of the tuition for part-time students.
For example, the following two blocks charge different amounts to the orange NSF grant:
The first block models a part-time student who is fully funded by the grant. The grant pays 50% of the specified salary and fringe costs, and 100% of the tuition.
The second block models a full-time student who is 50% funded by the grant. The grant pays 50% of the specified salary, fringe, and tuition.
Learn about added customizability by referring to Indirect Costs and Definitions.
The Supplies, Equipment, Travel, and Other groups all function in the same way to provide a consistent way to plan your budget.
Optionally integrate indirect rates — also known as overhead rates, central office rates, or facilities and administrative (F&A) rates — into your budget.
To use indirect rates, start by setting an indirect rate for at least one funding source.
If you don't want Spendlab to automatically add indirect costs (whether because the funding source doesn't provide them or you just don't want to see them), simply use the default 0% indirect rate.
Specify that an expense is subject to indirect costs by choosing Add indirects below the expense’s name. (In most cases, this is selected by default.) Spendlab will then automatically add indirect costs for any funding sources used on the row that have a non-zero indirect rate. (For funding sources with a 0% indirect rate, the indirect costs are always $0, so "Add indirects" has no effect.)
The monetary amount shown on expense blocks always represents the direct cost ($1000 in the example above). Automatic indirect costs are represented by a checkerboard pattern above the block. The total cost (direct + indirect) is deducted from funding source balances.
For example, consider a supply row with a yearly expense of $50,000 paid from a funding source with a starting balance of $100,000 and indirect rate of 50%. This means indirect costs are $50,000 × 50% = $25,000, so the total is $50,000 + $25,000 = $75,000. Therefore, since the starting balance was $100,000, the balance after a year will be $100,000 - $75,000 = $25,000.
What if you want more flexibility with indirect rates, or numbers and percentages in general? That’s where Definitions come in.
Define and re-use rates that change over time.
Currency definitions ($) are used for salaries and “Other” expenses such as tuition. When used in calculations, they specify the dollar value to use at each point in time.
Rate definitions (%) are used for indirect rates and fringe rates. When these rates are used in calculations, the blocks specify what percent value to use at each point in time.
Some useful features that make your Spendlab workflow more efficient.
For monetary values (salaries, funding, etc.), type k
for thousand or m
for million when editing. For example, 5k
becomes $5,000 and
1.2m
becomes $1,200,000.
The red ‘Warning’ icon indicates you have run out of money for the selected funding source, and will be visible in the Funding Sources section as well as all of the expenses sections (including People). They also appear when the given funding source has reached its end date.
Hot keys:
0-9
: Start entering a new value for the currently selected block.Enter
: Confirm or start editing the value of the currently selected block.Tab
: Move between editable text fields.Escape
: Cancel editing and revert to previous value.Privacy and security is built into the architecture of Spendlab.
Your budget files never travel over the internet, even though the Spendlab software operates in a web browser. All calculations are done on your own computer using modern client-side web technology.
When you click the Save button, your budget is downloaded directly to your computer as a ".htm" file that you can store and share however you’d like. Your data is not stored on our servers.
Spendlab also tries to autosave your most recent budget file in your web browser's local storage as a backup. You can disable this feature by browsing in "private" or "incognito" mode.
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