A well-managed project budget serves as a guiding compass, steering organizations through intricate financial terrain. In this article, you will find practical tips on planning a project budget in Bigtime Foresight and what the indicators presented in the budget mean.
Table Of Contents
The Purpose of the Project Budget
Managing Scheduled vs. Actual Budgets
Budget Planning Basics
Grouping in Project Budget
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The Purpose of the Project Budget
The project budget acts as a compass, directing and overseeing planned and actual expenditures. It serves as a tool for managing financial outcomes, including costs, revenues, and margins. The ultimate purpose of a project budget is to ensure that projects and IT service companies stay on track for financial prosperity. What is the purpose of the project budget view?
The Project Budget view in Foresight helps you answer the following questions:
- Have I planned my assignments within the framework of what I wanted to achieve on a given demand?
- How profitable are the staffers on a Time & Materials project?
- Do all staffers on this project have their rates correctly completed?
- Is the project profitable? If the margin is negative, planned costs have changed, and the project will be unprofitable.
Managing Scheduled vs. Actual Budgets
Foresight distinguishes between two financial statuses: Scheduled and Actual. Scheduled includes planned assignments and overheads, while Actual encompasses financial data linked to Time Entries in BT.
Financial Statuses in Foresight |
|
| Scheduled | Actual |
| Includes planned assignments and overheads | Encompasses financial data linked to Time Entries in BigTime |
Budget Planning Basics
Budget Planning Basics in Foresight |
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| Scheduled Work | Scheduled Overheads | Actual Work | Actual Overheads |
| provides insights into planned work, allowing verification of costs, revenues, and margins for individual assignments | this section enables the planning and verifying of project overheads, marking them as committed or actual | allows analyzing generated costs and revenues per assignment and comparing them with planned financials | adding unforeseen expenses or revenues that were not part of the initial plan occur under Actual Overheads |
Grouping in Project Budget
You have three options to group scheduled work data in the project budget:
- by Demand
- by Team Members
- by Assignments
You can group data by team members and assignments only for actual recorded work.