Rally Budgets are where you manage your funds for research, track your payments, and see upcoming spend. Rally is integrated with Tremendous, offering a global, flexible, scalable incentive system for research studies, and integrated with Respondent for external panel recruitment and related incentive payments - these comprehensive integrations keep everything centralized in Rally without the need for additional tools or accounts. This allows for flexible fund management with no upfront commitments, meaning you avoid getting locked up with prepaid credits. Use Rally’s Research Budgets to manage and apply funds any way you want to across internal incentives and external panel incentives and recruitment fees.
🚨 Managing Billing and Budgets requires a Super Admin role type.
Rally's Tremendous and Respondent integrations streamline your workflow by allowing your team to set up, fund, and send incentives to Participants in one place and without any additional accounts needed - all without ever leaving Rally. When getting started with incentives, external panel recruitment, and budgets, we suggest following this order of operations, detailed fully in this article, for the quickest and easiest setup.
Later, learn how to Manage Incentives to send, resend, or cancel incentives for you own Participants right in Rally. Learn more about Rally's full integration with Respondent by visiting our our articles collection on external panel recruitment in Rally.
Set Up Budgets
Get started with incentives or external panel recruitment by setting up Budgets within your Rally Workspace.
Every Rally Workspace includes a default budget named "Workspace Budget." For companies using Rally to conduct research for different teams or initiatives with separate budgets, a Super Admin can create and manage additional Budgets to keep funds separate and allow for easier tracking and reporting.
In the top right corner of Rally, select your user icon and select 'Settings'.
From the sidebar, select 'Budgets'.
Every Rally Workspace includes a default budget named "Workspace Budget."
To create a new budget, select '+ Add Budget' in the top right.
Enter a name for the new budget and select 'Create Budget'.
Add Funding Methods
Review the two options to decide the best method for adding Budget funds to Rally. We suggest setting these up in advance so your team is ready to go when it's time to fulfill incentives or recruit from an external panel.
Using a credit card allows you to add funds instantaneously at any time, but each transaction to add funds will incur a 3% processing fee from Stripe.
If you choose to use a credit card to fund Budgets, begin by adding a credit card using the steps below and then Add Funds via Credit Card.
💡 We recommend this option. Most customers opt to remove the overhead while also avoiding the 3% processing fee required for credit cards by requesting an invoice every quarter, adding $5-15k or more at a time to cover incentives and external panel recruitment for longer. This simplifies the process by allowing your team to plan ahead to determine, request, and get approval for budget amounts, and limits the number of invoices and people involved.
Add Credit Card
If you have not yet added a credit card to Rally, you'll have the option from the Budgets page to select 'Add Payment Method' which will take you to Billing in Settings.
In the top right corner of Rally, select your user icon and select 'Settings'.
From the sidebar, select 'Billing'.
In "Add New Card", enter all required details for the credit card you'd like to use to add money to your Budget(s):
Full name of the cardholder
Credit card number
Expiration Date (MM/YY)
CVC
Confirm all details are correct and select 'Save'.
After adding a credit card, follow the steps to add funds.
🚨 Funding your Budgets with a credit card adds a 3% processing fee. To avoid the 3% fee, easily fund your Budgets via ACH transfer below instead.
Add Funds to Budgets
Add funds in advance to your Rally Research Budgets to have funds ready when to:
Send incentives to research participants from your Rally People database.
Cover incentives and recruitment fees for external panel recruitment studies.
Add funds for external panel research: After building an external panel study, you'll see the total estimated costs required. Select a workspace budget to fund the study. If you do not have enough available funds in the budget, use the steps below to add enough funds. When you start recruitment, the study's estimated costs amount will be reserved from the budget. After reviewed and directly invited participants complete the research activities, incentive and recruitment fee payments will be processed on a per participant basis until the participation limit is met. Close the study to permanently stop recruitment and release any remaining unused reserved funds.
Add Funds via Credit Card
💡 Funding budgets with a credit card adds a 3% processing fee. Avoid this fee by funding your budgets via ACH transfer using the steps in the next section.
Navigate to the 'Budgets' tab in Rally and select 'Add Funds'.
This can also be completed from Settings > Budgets by selecting the 3 dots ... next to a budget and selecting 'Add Funds'.
If you have not yet added a credit card, you'll be redirected to the Billing section of your Workspace Settings to complete this step first.
Select the budget to add funds to.
Select the payment method/preferred credit card.
Enter the amount to add to the budget.
Select 'Confirm and Add Funds'.
Receipts for credit card charges are emailed from Stripe to the person who added the funds to Rally. If you need an additional copy of these receipts, please contact us. Most customers opt to avoid the 3% processing fee by using ACH Invoice in the steps below.
Add Funds via ACH Invoice
💡 Most customers opt to use ACH Invoice to remove the overhead while also avoiding the 3% processing fee required for credit cards by requesting an invoice for incentives and external panel recruitment funds every quarter, adding $5-15k or more at a time to cover a longer period of time. This simplifies the process by allowing your team to plan ahead to determine, request, and get approval for budget amounts, and limits the number of invoices and people involved.
Contact Rally Support using the support widget in the bottom right corner of Rally to request to add Budget funds via ACH Invoice, specifying the amount you would like to add and which Workspace Budget to add them to.
Invoicing is only done in USD. Please specify the dollar amount in USD.
The Rally team will issue the invoice based on the provided details.
Once the invoice is generated, proceed with the payment.
After the invoice is paid, the corresponding balance will be added to your Rally workspace, ready to be used!
💡 Funds will be added to your workspace after invoice payment. It may take 1-4 weeks depending on how quickly your finance team processes the request.
Manage Budgets
In the top right corner of Rally, select your user icon and select 'Settings'.
From the sidebar, select 'Budgets'.
On the right side of a budget, select the three dots ... to take the following actions, which are explained more in the following sections:
Transfer Funds
Add Funds
Rename Budget
Archive Budget
Transfer Funds
Transfer funds between budgets (only available when there are 2 or more budgets).
Select the 3 dots ... to the right of the budget to transfer funds INTO.
Select 'Transfer Funds'.
In the popup, select the budget to use as the source to transfer funds OUT of.
Enter the amount of funds to be transferred.
Carefully review your selections to ensure everything is correct.
Select 'Transfer Funds' to instantly transfer and see the changes applied.
Add Funds
Instantly add funds to any budget via a credit card on file in the section above, or avoid the 3% processing fee and add funds via ACH Invoice by contacting Rally Support. Once you have a credit card added, you can add funds to budgets any time.
Navigate to Settings > Budgets.
Select the 3 dots ... to the right of a Budget and select 'Add Funds'.
Select a credit card on file to use as your payment method.
Enter the amount to add in USD.
Review everything carefully before selecting 'Confirm and Add Funds' to complete!
Rename Budget
Change the name of a budget. Your default "Workspace Budget" cannot be changed.
Select the 3 dots ... to the right of the budget and select 'Rename Budget'.
In the popup, enter the new name for the budget.
Select 'Update Name' to confirm.
Archive Budget
Hide a budget that is no longer in use. Archived budgets will be hidden but kept around for historical accounting purposes. Budgets with funds cannot be archived without first being depleted to a balance of 0. To archive a budget, withdraw all funds or transfer any remaining funds to another budget first.
Select the 3 dots ... to the right of the budget you wish to archive.
Select 'Archive Budget'.
In the popup, select 'Archive Budget' to discontinue access to this budget.
Keep the learning going! Next, learn more about how to:
💡View and understand Budgets, view all payment activity, and export a .csv.
💡Manage Incentives to send, resend, or cancel in-house Participant incentives in Rally.