The Budget Consolidation Mod does 2 things:

FIRSTLY, it reduces payouts for jobs/contracts in the Career mode.
In normal mode, the parts budget for each job is reduced to 90% of the vanilla value, and the labour budget to 80%. This isn't enough to hurt anyone (you'll still be rich), but it at least makes the budgets meaningful.
In hardmode, the parts budgets are reduced to 80% of the vanilla value, and the labour budgets to 50%. This makes the hardmode actually somewhat hard, though each job is still doable and profitable with new parts, as long as you don't use more than the minimum required.

SECONDLY, the mod consolidates the parts and labour budgets into one - each job only has one "total" combined budget, not 2 separate ones.
This means in an example that instead of getting 500 (or a lower amount if you used cheaper parts) for parts and 200 for labour, you will always get $700, no matter what you do to the computer. This is much more realistic, and can be used to make more profit if desired. Using parts of higher quality than needed will now cost you some profit, and using used parts will raise your profit.

As profit is now completely the player's responsibility, and you can choose to make a loss on a job, you will no longer get 1-Star-Ratings for going over budget.

Notes:
- This mod works with all versions of PCBS, and on all platforms
- The mod doesn't work in the IT expansion or the eSports expansion, just in career mode
- Works with old savegames as well as with new games.

Instructions

The Budget Consolidation Mod requires BepInEx to function.

• If you already have BepInEx installed into your game, skip to step 4. Otherwise, download it here: https://github.com/BepInEx/BepInEx/releases
• Extract BepInEx, and place the contents into your game installation folder, where PCBS.exe is located. Steam example: C:\Steam\steamapps\common\PC Building Simulator (on steam you can right-click on PCBS, click on properties, Local Files, then Browse Local Files)
• Run the game once (just to main menu) so that BepInEx sets itself up, then exit the game.
• Download the Budget Consolidation Mod
• Extract the mod file "Paymod.dll" and place it in the "Plugins" subfolder of the "BepInEx" folder in your game (example: C:\Steam\steamapps\common\PC Building Simulator\BepInEx\plugins\)
  
  

All done! If you did everything right, once you're in game, you should notice that job emails only have one budget line instead of 2, "Total budget".
Enjoy!