Use case

See the budget on the same screen as the work

You did not go over budget last week. You found out last week. The number existed the whole time - it just lived in a tool the delivery team never opens, and arrived in a report a month after it would have been useful. Spectr puts a read-only copy next to the work: budget against spend, how healthy the project is, and who is booked versus what they logged.

The number that matters lives where nobody looks

Time tracking belongs to finance. The backlog belongs to delivery. They only meet in a month-end report. So a project hits 94% with two weeks of work left in the plan, and the first person to notice is whoever opened the export. By then every option is a bad one: absorb it, go back to the client, or cut something you promised.

What it actually looks like

A 400-hour retainer build. Three people on it. Harvest and Forecast connected.

Old way
The Harvest export lands on the 1st. Someone opens it. The project is at 94% with two weeks of plan left. Nobody saw it coming because nobody was looking.
Week 4
Now: the project's Budget drawer shows 41% spent against 38% of the stories done. Close enough. Nobody needs to do anything.
Week 6
Spend is 68%, delivery is 52%. That gap is the early warning, and it is on a page the delivery lead already opens.
Week 6
The Team tab shows why: one developer is booked 15 hours a week in Forecast but logged 26 for two weeks running. The estimate on one epic was wrong.
Week 6
You re-plan while there are six weeks left, not two. One item moves to phase two and the client is told in the same week it was decided.
Week 12
Project lands at 97% of budget. No overrun conversation, because the conversation happened in week six.

A month-end export that lands too late to act on has turned into a number the delivery lead sees in week six - which turns apologising into re-planning.

Budget where the work is

Connect Harvest and every project gets a budget drawer - a donut, a progress bar, and hours and cost split into budgeted, spent and remaining. There is also a workspace-wide Budget page listing every project with filters. You cannot edit budget in Spectr; Harvest stays the source of truth, and a failed sync leaves the last good numbers alone rather than blanking them.

Plan against reality, per person

Connect Harvest Forecast too and the Team tab shows what each person is booked for that week next to what they actually logged. The gap between those two numbers is the earliest honest signal you get about whether the plan is holding.

The forecast is based on what is actually done

Spectr reads each published story's status back from Jira, Linear and Shortcut, so the projection is anchored in real completion rather than a percentage someone typed into a status report. A story only counts as done when every tracker it went to says so, and a cancelled ticket is treated as cancelled instead of being quietly counted as delivered.

Money is admin-only

Any workspace member sees the health percentage and hours budgeted, spent and left. Only admins see money, rates, notes and fees. That split is what makes it safe to put budget on a page the whole delivery team uses.