Manage budget overruns

When spending exceeds your budget, take corrective action.

Identify overruns

1. Go to Budget & Finance
2. Look for red indicators (over budget)
3. Click to see details:
   • How much you’re over
   • Which categories exceeded budget
   • Overage %

Analyze the cause

Ask:

• Did scope expand (more work than planned)?
• Were estimates inaccurate (work cost more)?
• Was spending higher than expected (vendor costs)?

Corrective actions

Option 1: Request budget increase

1. Calculate the overrun amount
2. Document why (scope changes, estimate misses, inflation)
3. Request approval from leadership to increase budget
4. Update budget amounts in Budget & Finance

Option 2: Reduce scope

1. Review pending work in Board or Backlog
2. Defer low-priority work to next quarter
3. This reduces estimated costs

Option 3: Reduce spending

1. Negotiate vendor contracts
2. Optimize cloud spend
3. Pause non-essential subscriptions

Option 4: Reallocate from other budgets

1. Check if other budgets are under-running
2. Transfer budget from areas that don’t need it
3. Use it to cover the overrun

Prevent future overruns

1. Estimate conservatively — Add 10–20% buffer to uncertain work
2. Track spending regularly — Don’t wait until quarter-end
3. Forecast ahead — Use Budget forecasting and trends to predict overruns early
4. Communicate early — Tell leadership if you see an overrun coming

Communicate with stakeholders

Send a summary:

“Engineering is on track to exceed budget by 15% ($90k over). This is due to scope expansion on the payment system project. We recommend either increasing budget or deferring the notification system to Q4.”