Budgeting: service planning, signature & live tracking FAQs - Last updated 10/10/25
How does the bulk generate budget tool work? Is it based on the roster?
Answer: When generating Budgets in bulk, Lookout will create a draft budget for each of the selected Members, based on the visits, purchase orders and services scheduled in their roster.
https://support.thelookoutway.com/en/articles/budget-tool
I’m assuming that if we enable the TPP margin feature and then create budgets in bulk, the updated margin amount will be applied into the budgets — is that correct?
Answer: If you create a service plan manually, because you aren’t selecting a specific third-party supplier when creating the budget, we can’t pull in the TPP margin you apply to each supplier. However, you can enter a provisional amount to cover this when adding a service to the budget e.g. budgeting approx $500 for physio, assuming this covers the cost of a physio plus the margins/overheads to deliver this care.
If you generate a budget from the roster, it will include whatever rate was applied to the rostered item or PO, including any applicable margins.
Do they have to sign? What if you are sending a draft budget for review? Or just a minor changes as an FYI?
Answer: No, you don’t need to collect a signature to use budgets or live tracking. To track against a budget in live tracking and analytics, simply set its status to ‘approved’. This is separate from collecting the member’s signature, which is optional depending on your process.
If you build a budget from the roster, can you still manually add other services? That way you can build off the existing roster but still service plan/adjust.
Answer: Yes, you can generate a budget from the roster and still manually add, remove, or edit services after generation.
When sending it out for signature, will it operate like BoldSign? Will it send reminders and will it expire? Can you re-send if they lose the email without having to re-generate another budget?
Answer: It doesn’t send reminders, but you can re-send the budget as many times as needed.
What exactly is the bulk budget generate doing – generating based on rostered visits? Or copying from the existing live budget?
Answer: It copies the member’s roster, including visits and POs with estimated delivery dates that fall within the budget’s chosen date range. For POs to be included in the budget’s service plan when generating from the roster, they must have both a delivery date and a service attached.
How does budget tool handle open PO's in prior periods ... in opening balance or load as future expense?
Answer: In terms of real-time tracking, a purchase order (line) is considered “forecast” until it is invoiced for. In that regard it’s precicely accurate to the context of actual/forecast - albeit with the fact that you could have a forecast purchase order line, that’s three months old! To expand on that context more generally. Until a tracked expense has a genuine invoice line to point to, it’s considered forecast.
What level of detail will be available in the care app that the Member/AR/Billing Recipient will be able to see? From a live tracking perspective?
Answer: They will be able to access a PDF version of their budget. They don’t have access to any of the live tracking data - this is an internal tool only at the moment.