Tips on Tracking your Project Costs

While you Monitor and Control your Project Plan, don't forget to do the same with your financial spend else you may be in for an uncomfortable Project Board :-) Here are my tip on tracking your Project costs.

Your approach to estimation of budget should allow for Monitoring and Control of it

When you Initiated the Project, you should have established your Budget with the means to track spend to date and forecast to complete the Project and/or Stage. I previously described my tips on production of the Project/Stage budget and this post builds on the approach described there.

The first section of the Project Cost spreadsheet I use covers the Forecast and this can be maintained in line with any revisions to the Project Plan (e.g. we need an additional Contract DBA resource starting in 3 weeks time running for 3 months before being rolled off the Project)


Below this is an Actual Effort section for the same billable resources. Note that although I like to plan in days, typically human resource costs are captured in hours so the forecast is calculated in hours here to allow entry of actual hours when known. This is typically taken from some time sheet system for human resources with a workaround strategy for non human resources (so that you can effectively add in the cost, covered in the preparing Budget post)

The remainder of the spreadsheet calculates the costs to date (as defined by what weeks are marked "A" for "Actuals") and the forecast to complete the Stage or Project. As the cost forecast is provided on a week by week basis, you can see and report on "burn rate" over time going forward.

Your own spreadsheet trackers are useful but there is "one source of the truth"

Your own spreadsheet trackers are very useful but there is really only one source of the truth and that is what is within the organisations financial system. Typically a major project will be allocated a cost centre within this system and this should be monitored at least monthly. Typically your own tracker will be more up to date than the financial system so:

• I sometimes report both figures with appropriate "as is" dates and explanation as to status
• In line with organisational standards, potentially use accruals within the financial systems to take account of costs you know have been incurred but has yet to hit the financial system