Skip to main content
Budgets lets you set spend targets tied directly to an Explorer report, track actual spend against those targets period by period, and get notified before you go over. Unlike a standalone budgeting tool, every nOps budget inherits its dimensions and filters from an Explorer report—so what you budget for is always exactly what you’re already analyzing.
Budgets requires the Operate plan.

​
Get started

  1. Sign in to nOps.
  2. In the sidebar, open Operate → Budgets, or go to clara.nops.io/budgets.
  3. Click New budget, choose an Explorer report to base it on, and configure target details.
  4. Review the generated planning grid, adjust as needed, and save. Saving a new budget opens its detail page so you can review the plan and configure alerts.

​
Key features

​
Budgets landing page

  • Toggle between Grid and List view (your choice is remembered).
  • Portfolio summary cards show totals across your filtered budgets: Target (current), Actual (current), Avg % of budget, and Over budget count. This is a summary of your own organization’s budgets — for rolling up usage across multiple organizations you administer, see Portfolio Portal.
  • Search by budget name or linked report name.
  • Grid view shows mini trend charts and over-budget badges per budget. Budgets that back AI seat tracking also show an AI (Seats) category badge. List view lets you expand rows for per-dimension breakdowns (Budget (current), Actual, % of budget, Variance).

​
Creating a budget

Every budget starts from an Explorer report:
  1. Click New budget and select the Explorer report to link. The budget inherits that report’s dimensions and filters.
  2. Fill in Target details:
    • Basics — Name, Status (Draft or Active), Target type, Budget type.
    • Schedule — Period (Daily, Monthly, Quarterly, Annually), Start date, Number of periods, Lookback periods.
    • Baseline — Starting value (Previous Month, Average Monthly Lookback, or Custom), Growth rate (%), and an optional Normalization period.
  3. Review the auto-generated Planning grid, which is live-populated as you create the budget.
  4. Optionally configure Threshold alerts before saving.
Target type determines how the budget behaves: Budget type determines how planning values are edited:

​
Planning grid

  • Targets are pre-populated using your Starting value and Growth rate, based on your Explorer report’s spend.
  • On create, edit individual cells directly or use Refresh from lookback to regenerate values from the linked report.
  • Download CSV / Upload CSV to make bulk edits offline and re-import them.
  • Once a budget is saved, an Actual vs target chart tracks real spend against your plan by period.

​
Change or refresh the linked report

Open a budget and use Change Report to link a different Explorer report, or Update From Report on the report card to refresh planning using the current lookback data—useful after the underlying report’s filters or dimensions change. Refresh from lookback in the Planning section is available during initial creation; on an existing budget, use Update From Report instead.

​
Threshold alerts

Turn on Enable alerts, then configure rules from the budget’s Threshold alerts section. Use Manage all alerts to view, edit, or delete multiple alerts per budget. Alerts are evaluated daily at 12:00 PM Eastern for Active budgets only. Each alert shows Active or Inactive status; toggle Alert is active / Alert is paused when editing. Use Test alert or Evaluate now to preview delivery without waiting for the daily run.

​
Share budget report

Separate from threshold alerts, use Share report to send a digest of a budget’s status by email, Slack, or Teams:
  • Opens the Share budget report dialog with Send now or Schedule.
  • Once or Recurring (daily, weekly, monthly), in your timezone.
  • Add Email recipients, optional Slack / Teams channels, a Subject, and an optional Message.

​
Budget view in Explorer

Open Explorer and use View By to overlay a budget on your chart. This requires the Inform tier—without it, the budget overlay is locked with an upgrade prompt. When enabled, you get:
  • A target line on the spend chart, labeled with your budget name (for example, Production Target).
  • A Budget Trend stacked bar chart below the main chart, titled with your budget name.
  • A Budget Targets table with target vs. actual by dimension, titled with your budget name.
Handy for checking spend against a plan without leaving your analysis.

​
AI seat tracking

AI seat tracking is no longer set up from inside a cloud budget. It now has its own area in the sidebar under AI, where a seat tracking project holds your connected providers, seat roster, allocation groups, budgets, limit requests, and automation. Start at AI, or go straight to Set up AI seat tracking to create your first project. A seat tracking project is still backed by a budget, so two things remain visible here:
  • Budgets that back a project show an AI (Seats) category badge on the budgets landing page, in both Grid and List view.
  • Older ?tab=ai-seats links to a budget redirect into the matching section of the AI area, so existing bookmarks keep working.
Everything else — choosing providers, the seat table, editing seat limits, and Automated Rebalance — lives under AI.

​
Deleting a budget

Only the budget creator or an organization administrator can delete a budget.

​
FAQs

Yes. Every budget is linked to an Explorer report and inherits its filters and group-by dimensions. Create or choose a report in Explorer first, then start a budget from it (or use Create budget directly from the Reports list).
Budget targets are enforceable—you can attach alerts and see over/under status. Tracking targets are for monitoring spend against a goal without treating it as a hard limit. Both types support threshold alerts in the current product.
Bottom Up lets you edit each dimension’s target directly, and period totals roll up automatically. Top Down lets you set a period’s total target, which then distributes across dimensions proportionally.
Once per day, at 12:00 PM Eastern, for budgets with Active status. If a threshold is crossed, notifications go to the alert’s email and chat recipients.
Yes. Use Download CSV in the Planning section to export a template, make your edits offline, and Upload CSV to bring them back in.
Alerts are threshold-triggered—they fire only when spend crosses a rule you define. Share report sends a scheduled or on-demand digest regardless of whether any threshold was crossed.
Budget overlays in Explorer require the Inform tier. Upgrade to Inform to add target lines, the Budget Trend chart, and the Budget Targets table to your Explorer view.
It moved to its own area in the sidebar under AI. Providers, the seat roster, seat limits, limit requests, and automated rebalance are all configured on a seat tracking project instead of on a budget. See AI.
At minimum: read:analytics, plus read:members and read:spend_limits for per-seat spend and limits. Add write:spend_limits only if you want nOps to change per-user Claude limits. See Claude.ai (Enterprise).
  • Explorer — build the report a budget is based on, and overlay budgets on your charts
  • AI — track AI seat spend, allocation, budgets, and limit requests
  • Automated Rebalance — how nOps earns and keeps the right to change seat limits on its own
  • Claude.ai (Enterprise) — connect Claude Enterprise for usage data and AI seat tracking
  • Cursor — connect Cursor for AI seat tracking
  • Business Unit Economics — track cost per unit from Explorer spend and business metrics
  • Reports — see all budget alerts across your organization in one place
  • Dashboard — account-wide spend summary