We create the project budget by entering the cost/revenue amount by selecting the project ID and the category ID. Both fields are mandatory on the budget line. Thus, we are not able to create an overview budget at the transaction or category group level at this point. However, we have the same option on the "project budget balances" inquiry form. We can group by the project balance at the category, category group, transaction, and cost template level even if we create the budget and the transactions in different levels.

For instance, for a project that will take 3 years to complete, we may want to control the costs vs budget so as not to exceed the budget. At the beginning of the project, we could estimate the total transportation costs for expenses but couldn't separate them by specific categories like flight, train, bus, rental car, etc. However, when we create actual transactions during the project execution, we need to post costs at the category level because we need to use different cost accounts and report the costs in category detail. The system doesn't allow posting an expense by using one of the categories mentioned above. Because it always controls whether a budget line with the same category is created, or not. In this case, we have a budget line with a generic category, "transportation" and the system cannot match them.

This budget tracking process should be parametric and we should be able to create detailed or summarized budget and have the option to select the budget tracking level.