Compare the approved budget, planned costs and actual allocation costs of individual projects, so you can identify issues before a project’s costs get out of control. You can then quickly adjust your plan to get the best possible result.
- General
- Set Budgets for Projects
- Calculate Actual Allocation Costs
- Keep Track of Cost Estimate at Completion
- Compare Plan vs. Actual Costs
- List of Financial Figures
- Financial Figures in Other Views
General
To see your financial figures per project, you can configure the project settings with the project field Approved Budget and the sections Financial Tracker, Roles and Resources - Costs and Cost Type Tracker.
Required User Rights
To use financial figures in several views, you need to configure the following rights in the user groups:
- to display financial data, you need to check the option Access Financial Data under General
- to display actual allocation costs, you need at least Read Only rights for Access Actuals - Time Worked under Detailed Project and Program Rights
- for access to the approved budget, you need at least Read Only rights for the field Approved Budget under Project Field Rights
- to configure the project details and the project overview, you need to check the option Manage Project Fields, Project Settings, Overview and Advanced under Administrative Rights
Set Budgets for Projects
Approved Budget is a project field that you have to add to the project details to be able to see and edit it, just like other project fields. To do so, click Manage in the left sidebar and open Project Settings. Then, click on Add Project Field in any section and select Approved Budget.
Enter the approved budget either manually per project or import the budget for multiple projects by using our Quick Import for projects.
Compare Approved Budget to Cost Estimate at Completion
Once you have added the approved budget, you can go to the project details to compare it with the Cost Estimate at Completion in the Finance Tracker.
You can display the approved budget as well as other financial figures in other Meisterplan views. A list of the financial figures can be found below.
Calculate Actual Allocation Costs
To use actual allocation costs, you have to regularly import Actual Time Worked.
Meisterplan calculates the actual allocation costs from the imported Actual Time Worked and the Cost per Hour set for a resource or role at the time of import. With this value as a basis, you can compare planned to actual allocation costs, see the Cost Estimate at Completion and determine if the project is still within the approved budget.
Calculations of Cost per Hour of Resources Is Possible
With this release, all users with the Access Financial Data right can draw conclusions about the Cost per Hour of a resource, even if they don't have access to the Resource Pool.
Keep Track of Cost Estimate at Completion
At the Project Level in the Finance Tracker
In the Estimate at Completion tab of the project section Finance Tracker, you can see the approved budget, the Cost Estimate at Completion and their composition as well as the deviation of Cost Estimate at Completion from the approved budget.
Negative values on the deviation mean that the Cost Estimate at Completion is lower than the approved budget. Positive values mean that the Cost Estimate at Completion is higher than the approved budget and is displayed in red.
The bars show the approved budget (left) and the Cost Estimate at Completion (right). In the right bar, the individual costs are shown according to their color code.
Financial Events Costs
Financial Events Costs are always planned costs, not actual costs.
At the Role and Resource Level
In the Estimate at Completion tab of the project section Roles and Resources - Costs, you can see the Cost Estimate at Completion per role and resource and their composition for the respective project.
The estimate at completion costs will be displayed as a value and a bar. If you have imported actual time worked for the project, the Actual Allocation Costs + Allocation Cost until Today will be displayed in a darker shade.
By CapEx and OpEx in the Cost Type Tracker
In the Estimate at Completion tab of the Cost Type Tracker, you can see the estimate at completion costs broken down by CapEx and OpEx. By clicking the arrow of the respective cost type, you can expand the view to further break down the costs by allocation costs and financial events costs.
The bar charts shows the Cost Estimate at Completion for CapEx (left) and OpEx (right). The individual cost types are shown according to their color code.
Compare Plan vs. Actual Costs
At the Project Level in the Finance Tracker
The Plan vs Actual tab displays a comparison between the sum of planned and actual allocation costs until the last booking date of the imported actual time worked. If no actual time worked has been imported for a project, this tab does not contain any figures.
At the Role and Resource Level
The Plan vs Actual tab displays a comparison between the sum of planned and actual allocations costs per role or resource until the last booking date of the imported actual time worked for the respective project. If no actual time worked has been imported for a project, this tab does not contain any figures.
By CapEx and OpEx in the Cost Type Tracker
The Plan vs Actual tab displays a comparison between the planned and actual costs until the last booking date of the imported actual time worked. The costs are broken down by CapEx and OpEx as well as by financial events costs and allocation costs of a project. If no actual time worked has been imported for a project, this tab does not contain any figures.
List of Financial Figures
All financial figures are calculated based on their raw values, and then rounded to two decimals. This may result in small deviations of the second decimal in the displayed sums.
You can view these figures in the Project Details, the Project List, the Project Overview and the Board view:
- Actual Allocation Costs: Allocation costs actually incurred, calculated from the imported actual time worked and the cost per hour set for a resource or role at the time of import
- Actual Allocation Costs until 'Last Booking Date': sum of actual allocation costs until and including the date mentioned
- Planned Allocation Costs: sum of all planned allocation costs
- Approved Budget: the project budget entered in the Approved Budget field
- Cost Estimate at Completion:
- If actual time worked has been imported for this project, then it is the sum of future financial events costs, future allocation costs, past financial events costs and actual allocation costs + allocation costs until today.
- If no actual time worked has been imported for this project, then it is the sum of allocation costs and financial events costs.
- Deviation of Actual Allocation Costs from Planned: the difference between actual allocation costs and planned allocation costs displayed in time unit or percent, with a positive number indicating that the actual allocation costs are higher than the planned allocation costs
- Deviation of Cost EAC from Approved Budget: the difference between the Cost Estimate at Completion and the approved budget displayed in time unit or percent, with a positive number indicating that the cost EAC is higher than the approved budget
- Future Allocation Costs: allocation costs planned in the future
- Future Financial Events Costs: financial events costs planned for the future
- Planned Allocation Costs until 'Last Booking Date': sum of planned allocation costs until and including the date mentioned
- Total Planned Costs: sum of all allocation costs and all financial event costs.
You can only find these figures in the project details:
- Actual Costs: sum of planned and actual allocations costs as CapEx and OpEx
- Actual CapEx + CapEx until Today: sum of actual allocation costs + allocation costs until today and past financial events costs planned as CapEx
- Actual CapEx until 'last booking date': sum of actual allocation costs and past financial events costs until the date mentioned
- Actual OpEx + OpEx until Today: sum of actual allocation costs + allocation costs until today and past financial events costs planned as CapEx
- Actual OpEx until 'last booking date': sum of actual allocation costs and past financial events costs until the date mentioned
- Actual Allocation Costs + Allocation Costs until today: sum of allocation costs actually incurred, calculated from the imported actual time worked plus planned allocation costs from the last booking date until today
- CapEx - Cost Estimate at Completion: sum of future CapEx and past CapEx
- Future CapEx: sum of future allocation costs and financial events costs planned as CapEx
- Future OpEx: sum of future allocation costs and financial events costs planned as OpEx
- OpEx - Cost Estimate at Completion: sum of future OpEx and past OpEx
- Past Allocation Costs: planned allocation costs that are in the past (if no actual time worked is imported)
- Past Financial Events Costs: financial events costs added to the project that are in the past
- Planned CapEx until 'Last Booking Date': sum of allocation costs and financial events costs planned as CapEx until and including the date mentioned
- Planned OpEx until 'Last Booking Date': sum of allocation costs and past financial events costs planned as OpEx until and including the date mentioned
Financial Events Costs
Financial Events Costs are always planned costs, not actual costs.
Financial Figures in Other Views
In addition to the project details, all users with the Access Financial Data right can configure financial figures in the Project List, Board view and Integrated Reports. With the respective rights, the project overview can also be configured, and the financial figures can be exported via REST and Reporting API.
Configuring the Project List
In the Project List, you can quickly create an overview of all relevant financial figures. To be able to compare approved budget, actual allocation costs and other figures across multiple projects, configure the Project List to show the columns needed:
Find out more in the Project List article.