Compare the approved budget, planned costs and actual 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
-
Adding Actuals in Meisterplan
- 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 following project fields and sections:
- Approved Budget, Approved CapEx Budget, Approved OpEx Budget
- Financial Tracker
- Roles and Resources - Costs
- Cost Type Tracker
- Financials
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
- under Project Field Rights, you need at least Read Only rights for the fields Approved Budget, Approved CapEx Budget and Approved OpEx Budget
- 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
Depending on how you plan your organization's costs, you can add an approved budget for all costs, or separate CapEx and OpEx budgets. The approved budget will be compared in the Financial Tracket with the planned or approved costs. The approved CapEx and OpEx budgets will be compared in the Cost Type Tracker with the planned or approved CapEx and OpEx costs.
All three budget fields are project fields that you must configure in the Project Details or the Project List in order to edit and view them.
Approved Budget
You can enter the approved budget manually, or you can import budgets for multiple projects with the Quick Import for Projects.
Project Details:
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.
Approved CapEx and OpEx Budgets
Enter the approved expenses either manually, or import the budgets for multiple projects with the Quick Import for Projects.
Compare Approved CapEx and OpEx Budgets with Approved CapEx and OpEx Costs
The approved CapEx and the approved OpEx budgets will be compared in the Cost Type Tracker in the Project Details with the planned (or, if available) approved CapEx and OpEx costs:
You can also display the approved CapEx and approved OpEx budgets in other Meisterplan views. You'll find an overview of available financial figures below.
Adding Actuals in Meisterplan
Actual Time Worked
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 and determine if the project is still within the approved budget.
Calculations of Cost per Hour of Resources Is Possible
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.
Actual Financial Events
To add actual financial events in Meisterplan, you can either add them manually in the Financials section of the Project Details or import them using the Quick Import for Actual Financial Events. In a project's details, you can also see a list of all actual financial events for a project.
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, 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.
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 cost estimate at completion, budgets and deviation of the cost estimate at completion broken down by CapEx and OpEx. By clicking on 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.
A negative value for the deviation means that the cost estimate at completion is lower than the approved budget. A positive value means that the cost estimate at completion is larger than the approved budget, and will be displayed in red.
The bar charts shows the Approved Budget (left) and the Cost Estimate at Completion (right), divided into CapEx and OpEx. The specific cost types are displayed, with a color coding, in these bar charts.
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 actuals have 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 actuals have been 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
- Actual Financial Events Costs: sum of the imported actual financial events costs
- Actual Financial Events Costs until 'Last Booking Date': sum of the actual financial events costs until the 'last booking date', including the date mentioned
-
Planned Allocation Costs: sum of all planned allocation costs
-
Approved Budget: the project budget entered in the Approved Budget field
- Approved CapEx Budget: the project budget entered in the Approved CapEx Budget field
- Approved OpEx Budget: the project budget entered in the Approved OpEx Budget field
-
Cost Estimate at Completion:
- If actuals have been imported: it is the sum of future financial events costs, future allocation costs, actual financial events costs + financial events costs until today and actual allocations costs + allocation costs until today
- If no actuals have been imported for this project, then it is the sum of allocation costs and financial events costs.
- Deviation of Actual Costs from Plan: the difference between actual costs and planned costs displayed in time unit and percent, with a positive number indicating that the actual costs are higher than the planned 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 the 'last booking date', 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 Financial Events Costs + Financial Events Costs until Today: sum of the imported actual financial events and the planned financial events between the last booking date and today
- 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
- Cost Estimate at Completion (in the Cost Type Tracker): sum of the future CapEx, as well as OpEx and the actual CapEx + CapEx until today as well as actual OpEx + OpEx until today
- Future (in the Cost Type Tracker): sum of the planned CapEx as well as OpEx allocation and financial events costs, including the actual costs (if available)
- Past (in the Cost Type Tracker): sum of the past allocation and financial events costs for CapEx as well as OpEx
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.
Project List
In the Project List, you can quickly create an overview of all relevant financial figures. To be able to compare approved budget, actuals costs and other figures across multiple projects, configure the Project List to show the columns needed:
Find out more in the Project List article.
Integrated Reports
In integrated reports of the Financials type, you can analyze your financial data on the project, resource or portfolio level, or broken down to a weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly basis. Configure data fields such as Planned Net Value, Actual Net Value and Deviation of Actual Net Value from Plan to keep track of the performance of your projects:
Learn more about integrated reports of the Financials type in the Pivot & Charts: Financials article.