Project Budgeting Overview

To get the most out of Vision Project Control, you should establish budgets for your project's key components — including labor, expense, and overhead — and then periodically enter percent completes to reflect the projects’ current level of completion.

In this way you can monitor each project’s cost in relation to its overall progress. You can compare actual vs. budgeted amounts on the Project Progress Report, not only to determine whether or not a project is on target, but to understand the reasons why or why not.

Unless you are using Vision's Project Planning application, the tool that you use to enter all budgets and percent completes is the Project Budget Worksheet.

Project Budget Worksheet

The Project Budget Worksheet lets you experiment with different budgets before posting them to your database. Vision calculates new totals, percentages, and so on, based on the most recent data entered.

The Project Budget Worksheet is both a budgeting tool and a modeling tool. On the worksheet, you can:

  • Develop and manage labor and expense budgets for your projects. You can set up budgets for individual labor codes and expense accounts, at both cost and billing rates.
  • Run hypothetical budgeting scenarios. The worksheet lets you view the effect on the total budget and budgeted profit as you enter the budget or percent complete for each labor code and expense account. Analyzing the results of a "what-if" scenario lets you see if the project is meeting profit goals, before it is too late to make changes.

Budgets remain in effect until you enter new amounts that overwrite them.

We recommend that all project managers have access to the Project Budget Worksheet, so that they can review and update budgets for their own projects.

Related Topics:

  • Budgeting and Contract Type
    The importance of budgeting depends on the project’s contract type.
  • Labor Budgets
    Labor is the most significant cost on any project and, as such, the most important element to budget and track.
  • Expense Budgets
    Direct and reimbursable expenses, particularly consultant expenses, represent a significant project cost.
  • Budget by Cost Rates or Billing Rates
    You can create budgets using cost rates, billing rates, or both on the Project Budget Worksheet.
  • Budget Summary
    After you enter a project budget, Vision automatically calculates budget summary information, which appears in the Budget Summary dialog box.
  • EAC and ETC Values
    You can enter Estimates at Completion (EAC) and Estimates to Complete (ETC) on the Project Budget Worksheet.
  • Percent Completes Overview
    The percent completes that you enter for a project should be the project manager's estimate of how far a labor or expense component has actually progressed.
Parent Topic: Project Control Overview