Budgeting
You know the five levels a budget is built from, which of them can hold children, and where each total comes from.
A budget is a tree, four levels deep, with markups alongside it. Which level you are on decides most of what the grid will let you do.
**Categories** are the top division, listed on the left. You work in one at a time. The grand total sits below the list.
**Groups** organise a category. A group has no values of its own — it totals the accounts under it.
**Accounts** are where you budget. An account carries a number, a description, a quantity, a unit, a price and a factor.
**Subaccounts** split one account into parts, usually work phases. They have no number and cannot be split further.
**Markups** sit in their own area at the bottom of the category list. A markup is a base times a percentage, not a quantity times a price.
| Level | Can contain | | ---------- | ---------------------------- | | Category | groups | | Group | accounts | | Account | subaccounts, and detail rows | | Subaccount | nothing | | Markup | nothing |
Two refusals worth knowing before you meet them: an account that collects fringes, supplements, extra costs or tax [cannot be given subaccounts](/kb/article/how-collect-in-accounts-work), and a subaccount can never be split.
An account can also show rows you did not create — the fringes, supplements and extra costs applied to it. That is why an account can be expandable without having subaccounts.
Each level sums the one below: a group totals its accounts, the category total is pinned at the bottom of the grid, and the grand total covers the whole budget.
A **deactivated** account is left out of every total above it. Its own row still shows its value, dimmed, while the group, category and grand totals behave as though it were not there — which is what makes deactivation useful for "what if we drop this".
Markdown