Track hours against the budget
See when a project is about to go over its budget.
Client delivery · Consulting · On a schedule · Updated
Works with
- Slack
- Airtable
- Microsoft 365
Slack
Airtable
Microsoft 365How do you track project hours against the budget?
To track project hours against the budget, tell Maito where hours and budgets live and when to report. Each week Maito pulls hours from your time tracker, compares them with the budgets, estimates how far each project will run over at the current pace, and posts the at-risk projects.
How it's done today
Overruns are found at invoicing.
What Maito does
- Pull logged hours
- Compare with the budget
- Flag projects at risk
Example
Loop run: Monday 8:00 AM · Weekly budget check
Two of 9 projects are at risk. Atlas (Globex): 85% of budget used, about 40% of work left. At the current burn of 210 hours a week, it finishes roughly $58,000 over. Cobalt (Initech): 71% used, 55% of work left. Watch it, not urgent. The other 7 are within 10 points. The catch: Airtable still shows Atlas at $240,000, but the Sept 14 change order raised it to $260,000. I used $260,000. Without it Atlas would look 4 points worse. From Harvest hours through Sunday and the Airtable budgets.
@Maito what would it take to get Atlas back inside the budget?
Three options for you to weigh: cut one analyst from week 3 (saves about $31,000), drop the regional deep-dive (about $22,000), or ask Globex for a change order. Atlas's scope is in the SOW in Drive. Your call.
Maito (8:00 AM):
Two of 9 projects are at risk.
Atlas (Globex): 85% of budget used, about 40% of work left. At the current burn of 210 hours a week, it finishes roughly $58,000 over.
Cobalt (Initech): 71% used, 55% of work left. Watch it, not urgent.
The other 7 are within 10 points.
The catch: Airtable still shows Atlas at $240,000, but the Sept 14 change order raised it to $260,000. I used $260,000. Without it Atlas would look 4 points worse.
From Harvest hours through Sunday and the Airtable budgets.
Greg (8:21 AM):
what would it take to get Atlas back inside the budget?
Maito (8:23 AM):
Three options for you to weigh: cut one analyst from week 3 (saves about $31,000), drop the regional deep-dive (about $22,000), or ask Globex for a change order. Atlas's scope is in the SOW in Drive. Your call.
How to set it up
- Ask your agent
“Every Monday at 8am, pull last week's hours from Harvest, compare them with the budgets in our Airtable projects table, and post any project that's at risk in #partners.”
- Connect spreadsheet
- Airtable
- Microsoft 365
- Use time tracking
- Harvest
- Toggl
No MCP server needed. Ask your agent to save a skill with the steps, then add the login or API key in Settings → Vault.
Not connected yet? Your agent sends you a link to sign in.
What it won't do
The forecast assumes work continues at the current pace and uses scope from documents, so treat it as an early warning rather than a final number. It doesn't change budgets or bill clients.
Questions
Hours from a time tracker such as Harvest or Toggl, which connects with a login or API key in the Vault, and budgets from Airtable or Microsoft 365.
It tells you when the sheet and another source disagree, such as a change order, and says which figure it used.
Yes. Ask in the thread and it lists options with rough savings. You decide.
