Project budgets: dedicated balances for teams & courses

Project budgets let you carve your organization's Workspace runs pool into separate balances — one per team, department, or course — so each group spends only what you've given it. You find them under Organization Management → Credits → Budget management → Project budgets. New to usage banks? Start with the overview: Usage & Budgets: how organization billing works.

How budgets work

A budget holds its own balance, moved in from the pool. Workspaces you bind to the budget spend from it; when the budget is empty, simulations in those workspaces stop until you add credits. Workspaces not bound to any budget simply draw from the shared pool.

Above the table you'll always see the split: "In pool: X · In budgets: Y".

Creating a budget

Click Create a budget. The wizard has three steps:

1. Name & amount — name the budget and choose how many credits to carve from the pool. The wizard shows how much the pool will have left.
2. Who can spend — Anyone in the organization, or Specific members.
3. Fund workspaces — bind the workspaces that should spend from this budget. You can also set this later from each workspace's settings.

Managing a budget

Each budget row has actions:

• Add credits — move more credits in from the pool.
• Edit — the budget's name, expiry date and Low-balance threshold. Usage caps and pricing are set by Cesura.
• Assign — who can spend from this budget.
• Transfer — move credits to another budget.
• Split — carve a new budget out of this one.
• Merge into pool — returns the balance to the pool and removes the budget.

Under Funds you manage the workspaces bound to the budget: Bind a workspace, Move here from another budget, or Unbind it (it goes back to drawing from the pool).

Setting the budget from the workspace itself

Space owners can link a budget without opening the admin area:

When creating a workspace

The creation form includes a Budget for this space (optional) field listing the budgets the creator can spend from. Leave it on Organization credits (default) to charge runs to the organization's shared credits, or pick a budget. When the creator has a spending allowance, the default option shows how much of it is left. The field appears only for organization members creating a regular workspace — testing spaces don't use budgets.

A creator with no budgets available sees no field. Instead, the form says who will pay for runs, for example "Runs in this space are paid from the organization's shared credits.", or, when the creator has an allowance, how many credits are left in it and that runs stop when it runs out. A creator who is not an admin also sees "To give this space its own budget, ask your organization admin to create one."

If your organization requires every workspace to use a budget and the creator has none, the form warns: "You don't have a budget yet — ask your organization admin for one. Runs in this space will be blocked until a budget is linked."

The same field appears when you share a simulation as a new space.

In an existing workspace's settings

Open the workspace's settings and find Run funding. When the space has a budget, it shows "Currently using: …" with that budget's balance. Pick a budget under Budget for this space, or choose Organization credits to go back to the organization's shared credits. When there is no budget to pick, the section says in plain words who pays for runs in this space and how many credits are left. Only the space owner or an admin can change a space's budget; anyone else sees "Only the space owner or an admin can change this space's budget."

What space owners see

Instructors who own a workspace funded by a budget see a banner when their budget needs attention — when it's running low, and when it's empty, expired, or frozen (in which case simulations in the space can't run until the budget gets more credits, is renewed, or is unfrozen).

Low-balance alerts

When a budget turns low, runs out, is about to expire, or expires, Cesura emails your organization admins. The email names the budget and says that only the spaces it funds are affected, not the whole organization.

Unless you set a Low-balance threshold on the budget yourself, “low” is measured against the most the budget has ever held: one fifth of that peak, never below 50 credits and never above half the peak. A budget funded with 40 credits counts as low at 20, one funded with 1,000 at 200. A small budget does not alert the moment you create it. See The Credits page: track balance and request more credits.

Budgets and user allowances

Runs funded by a project budget don't count against the creator's personal allowance — each run is metered by exactly one budget. See User budgets: spending allowances for creators.