Annual Budget Update Checklist
If you're updating your budget for a new year rather than starting from scratch, use this checklist to make sure everything is accurate before applying it. Copying last year's budget is a great starting point — but it's easy to end up with stale numbers, ghost employees, and duplicate line items if you don't review each section carefully.
Step 1: Duplicate Last Year's Budget
Go to System Setup → Budget Worksheets and make a copy of your previous year's budget. Rename it with the new year so it's easy to identify. This gives you a clean starting point without losing your historical data.
Step 2: Update Your Field Employees
This is one of the most common areas where budgets go wrong year-over-year.
Remove any employees who are no longer with you.
Add any new hires with their role, name, hourly rate, and estimated hours.
Update hourly rates for existing employees to reflect any raises.
Review total hours paid — this should include both regular and overtime hours. For example, an employee working 40 regular hours and 10 overtime hours per week for 52 weeks has 2,600 total paid hours, with 500 of those as overtime.
Review unbillable hours. If you're not sure, pull your payroll register from last year and calculate shop time, drive time, and other non-billable activity. A good rule of thumb is at least 15% unbillable — less than that is usually an underestimate.
If you have salaried field employees, make sure they're entered under the Salaried Employees tab.
Step 3: Review Materials
Update your materials budget based on last year's actual spend from your P&L.
Adjust upward for any expected price increases.
Step 4: Review Equipment
Under Owned equipment: check that replacement costs are realistic. This field represents what it would cost to replace the piece of equipment — not what you'd sell it for.
Under Leased equipment: remove any items that are now paid off. If you're financing new equipment this year, add it here with the annual payment amount.
Watch for duplicate entries — it's common to end up with the same truck or trailer listed twice when copying from a prior year.
Equipment rentals and dump fees that get charged directly to jobs should not be in this section — those are job costs, not overhead.
Step 5: Review Overhead Line Items
Go through each overhead category carefully and look for:
Duplicates — it's common to find the same expense listed twice (postage, travel, continuing education, etc.) when copying from a prior year. Consolidate these.
Stale or irrelevant entries — remove anything that no longer applies to your business.
Costs that belong on the job — equipment rentals, dump fees, and similar items that you pass through to clients should be removed from overhead and charged directly to jobs instead.
Sanity-check large numbers — meals & entertainment, travel, and advertising are worth comparing against your prior year's P&L to make sure the numbers are reasonable.
Step 6: Check the Overview
Once all your costs are entered, go to the Overview tab.
Review your required sales goal. If the number feels unrealistic based on your expected revenue, something in your costs is likely off — go back and look for inflated or duplicate entries.
Review your labor rate and compare it to last year. A significant jump usually means either costs have increased or billable hours have decreased — worth investigating before applying.
Review your overhead recovery settings. Overhead is typically recovered primarily on labor, with a smaller percentage on materials (10–20% on materials is a common approach). Recovering too much overhead on materials can push your material markup uncomfortably high.
Set your profit margin goal in the Overview.
Step 7: Apply to the New Year
Once everything looks right, click Apply to Budget, select the new year, and click Save. Your updated rates will now be active throughout SynkedUP.
Step 8: Update Labor Item Costs in Your Item Catalog
Once your budget is applied, your new labor rate is active — but your item catalog labor items still need to be updated manually to reflect the new average wage cost.
Go to System Setup → Item Catalog and filter for your labor items.
Update the cost on each labor item to match your new average wage from the budget.
This ensures your estimates are using the correct labor cost going forward and that your job costing stays accurate.
Skipping this step is one of the most common reasons estimates look right on the surface but don't reflect your actual budget numbers.
Note: updating your budget and item catalog only affects new estimates and unsold projects. Work areas added to already-sold projects use that project's locked pricing snapshot — both the labor rate and material prices stay on their original numbers. See Why Don't My Labor Rates or Material Prices Update on a Sold Project... for the full explanation and workaround.
Not Sure If Your Numbers Are Right?
If your labor rate or sales goal looks off and you're not sure why, reach out via the in-app chat — we're happy to do a budget review with you.