Adding funds to budgets ✚

Think of adding funds to a budget as putting money in a better place than invoices for adding and removing as well as tracking and permissions. That's the summary. Some quick details:

There is no minimum
You can add funds by either Invoice or Credit Card and that money then is then moved from an invoice (0% fee) or credit card (3% processing fee) into your budget
If you change your mind later, you can always transfer funds later to a different budget
Once everything is selected, click Pay Now to add the funds to your budget.

How to add funds to a budget

Make sure you already have the budget created, and then go to Incentives > Budgets > Add funds (or type Cmd + K on MacOS or Ctrl + K on the PC, and then type "Budgets" to go straight there).

Enter the amount you’d like to add
Select which budget to fund
Click pay now

Why add funds to a budget instead of paying directly?

If you've only ever used invoices or credit cards to pay for incentives, here's what changes (and why it's worth switching):

With invoices or credit cards (the old way):

Each incentive order is charged individually at the time of payment
Tracking spending requires pulling transaction history or matching invoices manually
There's no way to pre-allocate a budget to a specific team, project, or time period
Anyone with access to the payment flow can charge against any available invoice

With budgets (the new way):

You load funds into a named budget once (via invoice or credit card)
Incentive payments draw from that budget balance — no repeated invoice selection needed
Spending is tracked automatically against the budget and the team using it
You control exactly who has access to each budget
You can transfer funds between budgets, or pull unused funds back
Budget email reports can be sent to stakeholders automatically on a schedule

Budgets don't replace invoices or credit cards — they sit on top of them. You still use an invoice or credit card to get money into a budget. After that, the budget becomes the payment method your team uses day to day.

Before you add funds

You need at least one budget created before you can add funds to it. If you haven't done that yet, head to Incentives → Budgets → Create budget. Give it a name, set an owner, and configure who has access. There's a full walkthrough in Creating a budget for incentives.

You'll also need either:

An existing invoice with available balance, or
A credit card on file

How to add funds: step by step

Getting to the Add Funds dialog

There are two ways to open it:

Go to Incentives → Budgets, then click the + Add funds button in the top right corner of the Budgets page.
Open a specific budget, then click + Add funds in the top right of that budget's detail page.
Click the three-dot menu (⋮) on any budget card from the Budgets dashboard and select Add funds.

You can also get there from anywhere in Ethnio using the keyboard shortcut Cmd + K on Mac or Ctrl + K on Windows, then type "Budgets."

Filling out the Add Funds form

The Add Funds dialog has four fields:

Amount Enter any dollar amount you want to move into the budget. There is no minimum — you can add $1 or $10,000. The amount you enter is what gets allocated to the budget.

Budget Select which budget you want to fund from the dropdown. If you have multiple budgets (for example, a "Research team budget" and a "Default budget"), you'll see all of them listed here. Pick the one you want to top up.

Funding method Choose how you want to pay:

Invoice (0% fee): Draws from available funds on an existing invoice. This is the most common option for teams that operate on purchase orders or net terms. There are no processing fees.
Credit Card (3% fee): Charges your card on file. A processing fee may apply depending on your plan and card type.

Select invoice (if using Invoice as funding method) A dropdown will appear listing your available invoices by number, PO reference, and remaining balance. For example: Invoice #9E1127FF-0428 · Lewis Hamilton · Testing PO here · $2,466. Select the invoice you want to draw from.

If you don't have an invoice with available funds yet, click + Request new invoice at the bottom of the dropdown. After requesting, you'll need to wait for the invoice to be approved and funded before you can use it — Ethnio will note this in the UI. Once funds are available on that invoice, come back to Add Funds and complete the process.

Reviewing and confirming

Before clicking Pay Now, double-check:

The amount matches what you intend to load
The correct budget is selected
The funding method and invoice are correct

Once you click Pay Now, the funds are immediately allocated to the budget. You'll see the budget balance update in real time on the Budgets dashboard.

What the budget looks like after funding

Once you've added funds, the budget's detail page will show:

The available balance (total funded minus total spent)
A progress bar showing how much has been used
A Recent transactions section showing all activity, including the "Adding Funds To Budget" entry with the amount, date, funding source (the invoice number), and which team member performed the action

For example, if you added $2,000 from Invoice #9E1127FF-0428 on April 23, you'd see an entry like:

Apr 23, 2026 · Adding Funds To Budget · $2,000 · Invoice 9E1127FF-0428 · Lewis H. · BT

This transaction log is permanent and auditable — useful for finance teams who need to reconcile incentive spend.

Using the budget to pay for incentives

Once a budget has funds in it, it appears as a third payment option when you're at the incentive payment screen — alongside Invoice and Credit Card. You'll see a new Budget tab (marked "New") in the payment method selector.

Selecting Budget shows a list of budgets you have access to, along with the remaining balance for each. Budgets your team doesn't have permission to access won't appear. Select the one you want to draw from, confirm the order summary (number of incentives, product surcharges, processing fees, total), and click Pay Now.

This is the key difference from paying directly by invoice: you don't pick an invoice at the point of paying incentives anymore. That connection between invoice and payment was already handled when you loaded the budget. Now the budget is just a balance, and paying incentives simply subtracts from it.

Fees when adding funds

Adding funds via Invoice has a 0% fee — what you load is what lands in the budget.

Adding funds via Credit Card has 3% processing fee (thanks, banks), which will always be shown in the Add Funds dialog before you confirm.

Transferring funds between budgets

If you've loaded funds into one budget and later decide they should be in a different one, you don't need to re-invoice or issue a new charge. Use Transfer funds instead.

From the Budgets page, click the three-dot menu on any budget and select Transfer funds — or from a budget's detail page, use the Transfer funds button in the top right. Enter the amount, choose the source and destination budgets, and confirm. The transfer is instant, and both budgets' balances update immediately.

This is particularly useful if:

A project wraps up with unused funds you want to reallocate
You funded the wrong budget by mistake
You want to consolidate several smaller budgets into one at end of quarter

Quick reference: adding funds checklist

Create a budget (if you haven't already) at Incentives → Budgets → Create budget
Go to Incentives → Budgets → click + Add funds
Enter the amount (no minimum)
Select the target budget
Choose Invoice (0% fee) or Credit Card
If using Invoice, select the invoice from the dropdown — or request a new one
Click Pay Now
Verify the updated balance on the budget's detail page