Your Strategy Report includes two parts that turn your recommendations into a financial conversation: the Roadmap and the Budget.
The Roadmap is your project timeline. It shows one-time capital expenditures and projects organized by year and quarter, showing what's happening and when. Think of it as the visual plan your client can look at and say "okay, I see where we're headed."
The Budget is your financial summary. It shows all planned spending (both one-time costs and recurring expenses) in a table format with cost breakdowns by period. This is where you talk dollars.
Both parts build themselves automatically. You don't create Roadmap or Budget items directly. They're generated from data you've already entered in your Assessment, IT Plan, and Technology data.
Where the data comes from
Any item in your Report that has budgetary fields filled out will appear on the Roadmap and/or Budget. The data flows from three sources:
Assessment items with budget data → security upgrades, compliance gaps, infrastructure improvements
IT Plan items with budget data → strategic projects, major initiatives, scheduled work
Flexible Items (technology data) with budget data → lifecycle replacements, hardware refreshes
You can control which sources are included at the template level by toggling each source on or off. If you've been filling in budget fields as you work through your Assessment, IT Plan, and Technology data, the Roadmap and Budget are already building themselves. If an item doesn't have budget data, it won't appear on either part.
How items appear on the Roadmap
The Roadmap is designed for projects and capital expenditures. Items that only have recurring costs (no one-time budget amount) will not appear on the Roadmap. An item needs a one-time budget value to show up here. If an item has both a one-time budget and recurring costs, both will be reflected.
The Roadmap organizes items based on how much timeline data you've provided:
Budget + Year + Quarter specified: the item appears in the correct year and quarter section
Budget + Year specified (no quarter): the item appears in an "Unscheduled" section within that year
Budget only (no year or quarter): the item appears in a general "Unscheduled" section below the yearly timeline
This means you can have a mix of precisely scheduled items and items you've identified but haven't committed to a specific timeframe yet. Both are useful in a TSM conversation. Scheduled items show the plan, unscheduled items show the backlog.
How items appear on the Budget
The Budget is broader than the Roadmap. It shows all items with any budget data: one-time costs, recurring costs, or both. Items that have only recurring expenses (like annual software licenses or monthly service fees) will appear on the Budget even though they don't appear on the Roadmap.
The Budget organizes items into a table showing costs broken down by quarter and month. If you have recurring costs enabled, the Budget shows both one-time and recurring amounts so your client gets a complete picture of planned IT spending.
Roadmap and Budget settings
Grouping and recurring
Two important settings affect how data is organized:
Group by Site: when enabled, items are grouped by client site/location first, then by year and quarter. Use this when you need to plan Budgets separately for different office locations.
Recurring: when enabled, the system adds additional columns for recurring expenses and calculates recurring Budgets alongside one-time costs.
Configuring columns
You can adjust which columns appear on your Roadmap and Budget:
Open the column settings from either the template or the Report
Check or uncheck columns for each section
The Roadmap and Budget can show different columns from each other
These settings are available both from the template level (affects all new Reports) and from within individual Reports (for one-off adjustments).
Recurring costs
Recurring costs represent ongoing expenses, annual software licenses, monthly service fees, subscription costs. You can track these in Assessments, plans, and technology data, and they flow into your Roadmap and Budget automatically.
Enabling recurring costs
Recurring costs need to be enabled separately for each data source:
For Assessment items: 1. Go to Settings > Templates > [Your Template] 2. Go to Assessment > Columns 3. Enable the Recurring toggle 4. Make sure all recurring fields are enabled
For Flexible Items (Technology data): 1. Go to Settings > Flexible Items Settings 2. Go to Columns for each Flexible Item type 3. Enable the Recurring toggle 4. Make sure all recurring fields are enabled
For Plan items: 1. Go to Settings > Plan Templates > Parts > Columns 2. Enable the Recurring toggle 3. Make sure all recurring fields are enabled
Note: Changes to plan template columns only apply to new plans. Existing plans need to have recurring columns enabled manually.
Recurring cost fields
For each item with recurring costs, you can fill in:
Recurring: the dollar amount of the recurring expense
Period: the billing cycle (monthly, quarterly, yearly, etc.)
Qty: quantity (the system multiplies recurring cost by quantity)
Effective: when the recurring expense starts
Cancellation: when the recurring expense ends
Important: Recurring costs will not appear on your Roadmap or Budget without at least a quantity, recurring cost amount, and effective date filled in. All three are required.
How recurring dates work
The effective date determines when recurring costs start appearing in your Budget. If you set a cancellation date in the middle of a billing period, that period is excluded from the calculation. If the cancellation falls on the last day of a period, that period is included.
Tips for effective Roadmaps and Budgets
Start simple. For your first few TSMs, focus on one-time project budgets in your Assessment and plan items. Add recurring costs once you're comfortable with the basics.
Use plans for major projects and Assessment items for smaller improvements. This keeps your plan focused on strategic initiatives while the Assessment captures incremental upgrades.
Don't stress about exact numbers. Rough estimates are better than no estimates. Even approximate budgets make the Roadmap useful for client conversations. You can refine numbers over time.
Review the Roadmap before each TSM. Make sure completed items are marked done, timelines are updated, and new items are added. A current Roadmap builds trust.
Use the "Unscheduled" section strategically. Items without a timeline aren't failures, they're your backlog. Walking clients through unscheduled items is a great way to prioritize together during the TSM.