How do you track a lab budget across several grants and projects?

A lab budget kept from invoices is always out of date. Our example lab orders £688.10 of media, serum and cryovials on 2 September, and the invoice takes weeks to arrive. Until it does, the spreadsheet shows money that has already gone.

In engineering terms, it's a sensor with a lag. The reading isn't wrong, it's late, and anyone deciding from it is deciding about last month. With three grants and a dozen people ordering, two of them eventually spend the same headroom. The fix is four numbers and one rule about timing. I'll follow one project through them: a £2,500 working bank of HEK293 cells, the example we also follow on our home page.

What is a fund, and what is a project?

A fund is one source of money with a fixed total and usually a start and end date: a research council grant, a commercial contract, an internal allocation. A project is a piece of work that draws on a fund. You allocate part of a fund to each project, and experiments and orders are charged to the project.

In the example, the fund is the lab's internal HEK293 platform R&D budget, £180,000 for calendar 2026. On 1 September the lab lead allocates £2,500 of it to a new project, PRJ-HEK293-WCB-26, with one goal: 40 vials of HEK293 at passage 5, at least 90% viable, by 30 September.

Keeping the two apart lets you ask both questions leadership cares about. Is each grant on track? And is each piece of work costing what was planned?

What are the four numbers a lab budget needs?

Spent, reserved, unspent and unallocated. Every pound in a fund sits in exactly one of them.

1. Spent. Charged to a project: goods received, services paid, costs posted.
2. Reserved. Held against a project for something already in motion, such as an order raised but not delivered, or materials planned for a scheduled experiment.
3. Unspent. Allocated to a project, not spent or reserved. What the project can still use.
4. Unallocated. Not given to any project yet.

The four always add up to the total. If your spreadsheet can't show reserved money separately, that's the gap behind most overspends: two people order against the same headroom because neither can see the other's order.

A worked example: one order, three days

On 1 September the example lab has three funds totalling £700,000, of which £475,000 is allocated to projects. Then the cell bank's order goes in on 2 September and arrives on 4 September. Watch where the £688.10 sits.

Committed money	1 Sep	2 Sep, ordered	4 Sep, received
Spent	£286,046.54	£286,046.54	£286,734.64
Reserved	£310.00	£998.10	£310.00
Unspent	£188,643.46	£187,955.36	£187,955.36
Total	£475,000.00	£475,000.00	£475,000.00

The day the order is raised, unspent drops by £688.10. That's the day the money stopped being available, so that's the day the budget should say so. Two days later the goods arrive and the same £688.10 moves from reserved to spent. Unspent doesn't move again. Nothing is counted twice, and nothing waits for the invoice.

The other £225,000 is unallocated throughout, which brings the total back to £700,000.

How do you work out a lab's runway?

Runway is how many months the money lasts at the current rate of spending. Two choices decide whether the number means anything.

Which money to count. Use the unspent allocation, not the whole remaining balance. Unallocated money has no work planned against it, so counting it makes the runway look longer than any project can actually run.

Which rate to use. One month is too noisy, because a single large order moves it. An average of the last three is steadier and still responds when spending changes. It's the same trade-off as choosing a filter constant: smooth enough to ignore a spike, quick enough to follow a real change.

On 1 September the example lab spent an average of £31,378 a month over the last three months. Runway is £188,643.46 / £31,378 = 6.0 months, so the money runs out in March 2027. CCA Labs marks under three months as Short, under six as Watch, and six or more as Healthy. This lab is just on the healthy side, which is a prompt to decide what the unallocated £225,000 is for.

When should an order count as spent?

When the goods are received. Before that, hold its value as reserved against the project, from the moment the purchase order is raised.

The rule matters twice. Record only the invoice and orders in transit are invisible, so the budget looks healthier than it is. Record the order and then charge the serum again when an experiment uses it, and the same money is counted twice. That's a good way to feel poorer than you are, which is at least the safe direction to be wrong in.

CCA Labs follows the rule. A purchase order holds its value against the project when it's ordered, and receiving it posts the cost. When the cell bank run later draws that serum from stock, the project ledger notes the use as "Already funded when the goods were purchased, so this does not draw down the budget."

What about staff time?

Bench time is often the biggest cost of an experiment, and the one budgets leave out. Whether it belongs on a grant depends on the grant. If it pays for staff time, charge it. If salaries come from payroll, charging it again counts it twice.

Each fund in CCA Labs has a setting, Charge experiment labour to this fund, which is off by default. Time recorded on experiment steps is costed at each person's labour rate either way, and the rate is saved on the step when it runs, so next year's pay rise doesn't rewrite this year's costs. The switch only decides whether that cost is charged to the fund.

What did the cell bank actually cost?

Less than the order, and more than the materials. The bank run used £150.39 of what was bought: 405 mL of DMEM, 81 mL of serum, 53 mL of trypsin, 4 mL of DMSO and 40 vials. It took 7.5 hours at the bench, which at £48 an hour is £360.00. So the bank cost £510.39, or £12.76 a vial.

The other £537.71 of the order is still on the shelf, already paid for, waiting for the next piece of work. That's the difference between spend and cost. The fund shows what you paid. The project shows what the work used. Leadership needs both, and a spreadsheet usually has one.

What stops a project going over budget?

A purchase order that would take a project past its allocation is blocked when it's raised. The order form shows the money available, the order's estimated cost and the shortfall. Someone allowed to allocate budget can Authorise Overspend there and then, with a reason. Anyone else can Request Approval, and the budget admins decide. Either way the amount, the reason and the person who decided are on the record.

Where it goes wrong

A runway is a projection, and it's only as good as the last three months. A lab about to buy a £40,000 instrument will see it in the forecast, not in the average. CCA Labs has a Forecast view for that, which projects spend from released protocols and how often each will run. It is also not your accounting system. There's no general ledger, invoice matching or accounts payable, and the numbers you report to a funder still come from finance.

How the Budget page in CCA Labs is laid out

• Total budget, split into Committed and Free to Allocate.
• Where the Money Sits: one bar with Spent, Reserved, Unspent and Unallocated.
• Spend: the trailing three-month average, with a chart over 3, 6 or 12 months.
• Runway: months left, the month it runs out, and a status.
• Funds: one row per fund with its own four-way bar, and anything that needs attention.

Behind it, Burn compares spending with plan and marks each fund Over Budget, Burning Fast, On Track or Under-burning. Recurring costs schedules overhead such as calibration and servicing onto the ledger, and the ledger lists every movement and exports. Every figure comes from the cost entries that orders and experiments create, so the project, the program and the fund show the same number.

When you create your lab, setting up is a fund per grant with its total and dates, allocated to projects. You can also upload your protocols and stock sheets and the AI drafts your workflows and inventory, so costs have something to attach to from day one. The rest is on the all-in-one lab page.

The £688.10 order is where operations takes over. What it should contain, how it moves from request to received, and what to do when the serum is back-ordered are in what a lab purchase order process should look like.