Budget

2. Collect PI Budget Inputs

Human checkpoint: Ask the PI for budget data. Ask different questions depending on the budget model.

For EU (person-months model), ask:

1. How many person-months per work package per partner?
2. Unit cost per person-month (or use institutional rates)?
3. Equipment costs (itemize major equipment >EUR 15,000)?
4. Travel budget (conferences, project meetings, secondments)?
5. Subcontracting costs (what tasks, to whom)?
6. Other direct costs (consumables, open access, audit)?

For Romania (monthly salary model), ask:

1. Team members with role, monthly salary, and effort percentage?
2. Duration in months?
3. Mobility/travel costs?
4. Equipment and consumables?
5. Any other direct costs (services, software licenses)?

Save the PI's raw inputs to <proposal_dir>/budget/budget_input.yaml.

3. Calculate Budget

Run the budget calculator with the PI's inputs:

uv run gw-budget calculate <proposal_dir>/budget/budget_input.yaml

This produces:

• Per-year and total costs
• Direct vs indirect breakdown (using the agency-specific indirect model)
• Currency-appropriate formatting (EUR for EU, RON for Romania)
• Per-work-package breakdown (Horizon Europe) or per-year breakdown (UEFISCDI/PNRR)

4. Format Output

Generate the formatted budget tables:

uv run gw-budget format <proposal_dir>/budget/budget_input.yaml --style <agency_style>

Where <agency_style> is horizon_wp for EU or uefiscdi for Romania.

Save formatted output to <proposal_dir>/budget/budget.md.

5. Write Budget Justification

Draft <proposal_dir>/budget/justification.md with a narrative explanation of each cost category:

• Why each team member's effort level is appropriate
• How equipment costs are essential to the project objectives
• Travel justification tied to dissemination and collaboration goals
• For EU: explain subcontracting needs and why the work cannot be done in-house
• For Romania: explain mobility costs and their link to project activities

Use formal grant-writing language. Every cost line must be tied to a specific project activity or objective.

6. Review Budget

Human checkpoint: Present the PI with:

• Total budget summary (direct + indirect)
• Per-year breakdown table
• Per-work-package breakdown (EU) or per-category breakdown (Romania)
• Justification narrative highlights
• Any budget cap warnings from agency.json

Ask the PI to confirm line items or request adjustments. If adjustments are needed, update budget_input.yaml and re-run the calculator.

7. Update State

uv run gw-state update <proposal_dir> --phase budget --status complete

Report:

• Budget model used (person-months / monthly salary)
• Total budget with currency
• Direct vs indirect split
• Number of cost categories
• Path to budget/budget.md and budget/justification.md

Error Handling

• Proposal directory doesn't exist: Abort and instruct the PI to run uv run gw-state init first.
• Agency manifest missing: If gw-agency budget fails, the budget model cannot be determined. Ask the PI to verify the agency/mechanism in config.yaml against uv run gw-agency list.
• config.yaml missing or unparseable: Fall back to agency defaults, warn the PI, and save a minimal config.yaml stub alongside the budget.
• Missing PI inputs (no team, no duration): Do not fabricate numbers — pause at the human checkpoint and collect the required fields before calling gw-budget calculate.
• Budget exceeds agency cap: Mark the result as failed in state (--status failed), print the overage explicitly with the cap, and suggest which categories to trim before re-running.
• gw-budget tool not installed: Run uv sync from the plugin root and retry.