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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.

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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.

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Key features

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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.
  • Search by budget name or linked report name.
  • Grid view shows mini trend charts and over-budget badges per budget. Budgets with AI seat tracking enabled also show a violet AI badge. List view lets you expand rows for per-dimension breakdowns (Budget (current), Actual, % of budget, Variance).

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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AI seat tracking

Opt in per budget to see per-user cloud budget metrics alongside AI tool spend and seat limits from connected providers. This is separate from your Explorer-linked cloud budget: it adds a seat-level view for tools like Claude Enterprise and Cursor. Prerequisites
  1. Connect the provider org-wide under Settings → Integrations:
  2. Open the budget as a creator or nOps administrator (members can view but cannot change tracking settings).
Enable tracking
  1. Open the budget detail page and scroll to AI seat tracking.
  2. Select one or more providers (Claude Enterprise, Cursor).
  3. Save the budget. Data loads after save for newly selected providers.
Disable tracking
  1. Open the budget and go to AI seat tracking.
  2. Click each selected provider chip to deselect it (no providers selected).
  3. Save the budget. The AI badge disappears from the budgets landing page and seat data is no longer fetched for that budget.
Disabling tracking on a budget does not disconnect the integration org-wide. Other budgets can still use the same Claude or Cursor connection.
What you see when tracking is on
  • Summary cards — Total AI seat spend, total seat limits, % of limits used, % of current-period actual/target, and tracked seat count.
  • User table — One row per organization member, matched to provider accounts by email:
    • Linked budget — Planned target, cloud actual, and % of plan for the current period (when the user matches a planning row).
    • Per provider — Period-to-date AI spend and effective seat limit.
  • Synced / All — Synced shows users matched to a provider account by email; All includes everyone in the org.
  • AI badge — On the budgets grid and list, budgets with tracking enabled show a violet AI pill (tooltip: AI seat tracking enabled).
Adjust Claude seat limits (optional) If your Claude Enterprise API key includes write:spend_limits, budget creators and administrators can edit Seat limit cells inline for matched Claude users. Changes save when you leave the field. Clearing a limit removes a per-user override only (inherited org or seat-tier limits cannot be deleted from nOps). Cursor limits are read-only in nOps today. If limit edits fail with a permissions error, recreate or update the key in claude.ai with write:spend_limits and reconnect under Settings → Integrations. Provider errors If a provider cannot be reached (missing scope, invalid key, rate limit), nOps shows an error banner in the section with a link to Settings → Integrations. Cloud budget metrics in the same table still load from your linked Explorer report.

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Deleting a budget

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

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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.
Open the budget, deselect all provider chips under AI seat tracking, and Save. The budget stops loading seat data and the AI badge is removed from the landing page. Your org-wide Claude or Cursor integration stays connected for other budgets.
nOps matches nOps users to provider accounts by email. If the email in nOps does not match the user’s Claude or Cursor account, or the user is not in the provider organization, the row shows No account found for that provider. Switch to All to see unmatched users.
Not today. Cursor seat limits are read-only in the AI seat tracking table. Claude Enterprise supports inline limit edits when your API key includes write:spend_limits.
At minimum: read:analytics (Inform), plus read:members and read:spend_limits for spend and limits in Budgets. Add write:spend_limits only if you want to adjust per-user Claude limits from a budget. See Claude.ai (Enterprise).
  • Explorer — build the report a budget is based on, and overlay budgets on your charts
  • Claude.ai (Enterprise) — connect Claude Enterprise for Inform and AI seat tracking in Budgets
  • Cursor — connect Cursor for AI seat tracking in Budgets
  • 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