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Project budgeting explained

OneDesk was built to make your job easier, especially if you are a project manager. In building OneDesk, our team listened to product managers and pinpointed the areas in which our software can step in and save the day. Project budgeting is one of them.

One of the most frequent items on many project managers’ list of challenges is project budgeting. Project managers may need to monitor their projects’ budgets very closely and ensure they don’t go over-budget. This is especially challenging when it comes to long-term projects that have many requirements and a large team. One of the worse things a project manager should ever have to do is to tell the CEO of the company, or even their customer, that they need more money to work on a project.

When projects take an unexpected detour, the first thing that gets affected is usually the budget. Thus, project budgeting skills are very valuable to have in the world of project management.

Project budgeting with OneDesk

OneDesk’s project budgeting tool allows you to stay on top of your project’s budget. Simply enter the costs (or estimates) for your requirements and create tasks from them. You can also create tasks from scratch and enter the planned cost.

Refer to the screenshot below. In the issues/task application (1), go to the tracking work/budget view (2).

Using this comprehensive grid, you can compare your tasks’ and issues’ planned budgets to their actual budgets.

You can track the:

Actual Work – how much work has been done on the tasks to date, in man-hours.

BCWS (Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled). This is the cost budgeted for the amount of work that was planned to be completed at this point.

ACWP (Actual Cost of Work Performed). This is the cost of the work performed to date.

BCWP (Budgeted Cost of Work Performed). This is the amount that was planned to be spent for the amount of work performed to date.

Cost Variance the difference between the BCWP and the ACWP. This indicates whether your work is over or under budget.

BCWS (Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled). This is the cost budgeted for the amount of work that was planned to be completed at this point.

BAC (Budget at Completion). This is the budgeted amount of how much the task would cost at completion.

EAC (Estimate at Completion). This is an estimate of how much the task will cost at completion, if you continue to work on it at the same pace.

VAC (budget) (Budget Variance at Completion). This is the difference between the BAC and EAC. It predicts whether your tasks will be over or under budget at completion.

Related blog posts:
Projects cost analysis with OneDesk

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