How RemodelFin budget alerts work
RemodelFin warns you as a job's costs approach its budget, so you can act while there is still time to price a change order or change the plan. This page explains exactly what is measured, when an alert fires, and what the alerts do not do. It describes how the product behaves as of October 2026.
What is measured
Each job has a cost budget, the estimated cost of the job. RemodelFin compares the cost recorded against the job with that budget and expresses it as a percentage: actual cost divided by estimated cost, times 100.
The actual cost is built from the labor, materials and other expenses recorded on the job. Only approved time entries and approved expenses count, so an expense that is still pending approval does not move the percentage until it is approved. A job with no cost budget set has nothing to compare against, so it gets no budget alerts.
The four budget checkpoints
Seventy percent of the cost budget is spent. Time to check what is left to buy and build.
Eighty-five percent is spent. Little room remains for surprises.
Ninety-five percent is spent. A change order or price correction needs to happen now.
Costs have reached the budget. Your target margin is now at risk.
New jobs have the 70%, 85% and 95% checkpoints switched on. The overrun alert at 100% is separate and fires when costs reach the budget.
When an alert fires
- The check runs each time an approved time entry or expense is recorded, changed or removed on the job.
- Each checkpoint fires one notification when the job first reaches it. You are not sent the same alert again for every later expense.
- If a correction brings the cost back below a checkpoint, for example a wrong expense is fixed, that checkpoint resets and can fire again if the cost climbs back past it.
Why 70, 85 and 95
The checkpoints are fixed numbers that give you a staged warning before the budget is gone: an early warning, a caution and a last call. They are not derived from industry data or a statistical model, and we do not claim they are the best possible numbers for every trade or job size. A short job with a large material order may deserve a different rhythm than a long job paid for in small steps. Treat the alerts as a consistent tripwire, not a forecast.
Separate profit alerts
RemodelFin also runs profit rules that are independent of the budget checkpoints:
- Labor over estimate: actual labor cost is more than 10% above the estimated labor cost.
- Material over estimate: actual material cost is more than 10% above the estimated material cost.
- Margin below target: the job's margin has fallen below its target margin.
- Margin significantly below target: the margin is more than 5 percentage points below target, which is flagged as critical.
When the condition clears, the alert is removed so it does not keep showing after the problem is fixed.
What the alerts do not do
- They do not use machine learning or predict the final cost of a job. They compare recorded costs with your own budget.
- They are only as accurate as the budget and the costs entered. A budget that was set too low will warn early, and costs that are not recorded cannot trigger anything.
- They do not replace reviewing the job. They tell you when to look.