Budgeting
You know what an effect measures, and why a budget line can count toward one without being changed by it.
An effect is a **measurement**, not a cost. Assigning one to an account changes no total; it marks that the account's spend counts toward something you have to demonstrate.
Funding bodies and regional schemes attach conditions to their money: spend a given share in the region, employ locally, reach a spending threshold. Somebody has to be able to show, from the budget, that the condition is met.
An effect is that tally. You define one per condition and mark the accounts that count toward it, and the budget can then report the total at any moment — including while it is still being built, which is when the answer is useful.
A company assignment splits a cost between partners; a fringe adds cost. An effect does neither. It reads what is already there.
That is what makes it safe to assign generously: marking an account as counting toward a regional spend tally cannot make the budget wrong.
An effect carries an **Include Fringes %** — the share of an account's wage on-costs that counts toward it alongside the wage itself.
It exists because funding rules differ on the point. Some count employer contributions as qualifying local spend, some count part, some none. One percentage per effect settles it for every account that effect touches.
Each effect also carries a **Required Spend %** — the target the tally is measured against, so the budget can show not just what has been counted but whether it is enough.
Effects are read as columns in the grid and on the dashboard, not inside the account — see [show company and effect columns](/kb/article/show-company-and-effect-columns).
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