This article explains the Budget pages for patents and trademarks. ArcPrime compares invoiced spend with your annual plan and breaks it down by technology, country, task code, and more.
Prerequisites
You hold the Administrator, Inhouse Counsel or Inhouse Paralegal role, and your workspace includes the Budget module.
Invoices are synced from SimpleLegal. Until the first sync completes, the page reads First SimpleLegal sync in progress.
An annual plan is set under Settings > Workspace Data > Budget. Without one, the chart shows spend and forecast only.
Steps
Open Patents > Portfolio > Budget. The page has two tabs, Budget and Invoices; this article covers Budget. For trademarks, open Trademarks > Budget.
Set the Period on the right. The current fiscal year applies by default. You can also pick Last fiscal year, This quarter, Last quarter, Last 12 months, Last 6 months, or choose your own dates.
Choose a Group by dimension above the cards. Case dimensions include Technology, Country, Stage, Status, Case Type, Outside Counsel, Inhouse Counsel, Assignee, and custom fields. Billing dimensions are Task Code, Vendor, Payment Status, and Activity / Expense Code.
Stage is the default. No breakdown hides the breakdown card.
Read Patent Spend vs. Budget. The figures show Spent to date, Forecast, and the fiscal year budget, such as 2026 Budget. Bars show spend by Month, Quarter, or Year, stacked by your Group by segments. A Forecast band shows projected spend, and a line marks the Monthly budget, Quarterly budget, or Annual budget.
Read Patent Spend Breakdown. The doughnut and its table show Spend, Budgeted, and Share for each segment. Budgeted comes from your plan and reads Unavailable where no plan applies.
Click Filter in the page header to show the filters. Use Task Code, Activity / Expense Code, and Invoice Vendor to keep only certain invoice lines. Use the patent filters, such as Status, Country, Technology, and custom fields, to scope the cases.
Click Reset all filters, under Period, to clear every filter.
Click the export icon in the page header to download the current view as CSV. The file holds the summary, the filters, the chart by your chosen interval, the breakdown, and the invoice line items.
The CSV follows any open drill-down. An export over 50,000 invoice line allocations is refused, so narrow the filters or period and try again.
The trademark page works the same way with trademark dimensions such as Class, Mark Type, IP Procedure, and Filing Basis. Its Group by starts on Country, its filters are always shown, and it has no Invoices tab.
Drilling Into Invoices
Click a doughnut segment, a breakdown row, or a bar to list the invoices behind it. The list shows how many invoices it holds and their total. Its columns are Invoice, Date, Vendor, Internal ID, Billing Matter, Task code, and Amount, and each one sorts.
An invoice with several charges expands to show them. Click an invoice number to open the invoice with its source document. Click the X to close the list.
Setting the Plan
Open Settings > Workspace Data > Budget. Under Annual Budget, choose the month the Fiscal year starts in, select the Fiscal year, and enter the total. On the Patents tab, use Budget by technology to allocate amounts per technology, nesting subtechnologies if you wish.
Use Budget by spending category to set amounts for a task code, activity or expense code, or invoice vendor. These amounts fill the Budgeted column when you group by those dimensions. The Trademarks tab holds the trademark plan. See budget configuration.
Tip: Ask the AI assistant on the Budget page what-if questions, such as what stopping filings in one country would save. See how to forecast budget scenarios.
Related Articles
How to Forecast Budget Scenarios with the AI Assistant — Model what-if changes and download the forecast
Budget Impact of Pruning — Projected renewal fees from pruning decisions
Budget Configuration — Fiscal year, annual plan, and fee schedule