Managing budget is a crucial part of any project. A budget can help managers improve cost management and reduce budget overruns. Project managers can view the planned versus actual cost in real time with the budget status report. Multiple currencies can be set for different projects to help businesses operating in different countries. By integrating with accounting tools such as Zoho Invoice or Zoho Books, managers can sync their project data and generate invoices.
Benefits:
- Track project budget and keep it on track
- View planned vs actual reports
- Bill by staff hours, fixed cost, or task and issue log hours
- Track budget by project amount or hours
- Track budget by milestone amount or hours
Billing Method :
- Based on Staff Hours – Users are assigned different rates, and project billing is based on the user rates of the members working on the project. You can set user rates in the Add User page.
- Based on Project Hours – The users are assigned a standard rate, and project billing is based on the hours logged for the project as a whole.
- Fixed Cost for Project – Clients are invoiced based on a fixed cost and this option is available only for portals integrated with Zoho Invoice. In this option, since the invoicing is done based on a fixed cost you cannot track a budget with varied amount. i.e Budget type based on amount is not applied.
- Based on Task/Issue Hours – In task or issue based billing method clients are invoiced based on the log hours in task or issue. This billing method is used when your organization provides services which are independent of each other and hence each task/issue requires a different budget based on their purpose. This will be added to the task list, milestone and project planned cost.
Budget Tracking Method
Budget tracking method allows you to track planned and actual costs for project budgets that are based on amount (Based on Project Amount or Based on Milestone Amount ) and the Billing Method is set as Fixed Cost for Project. The invoicing is done based on fixed cost.
- At Risk: (Actual < Budget) && (Forecasted (cost/hours) > Budget)
- Overrun: Actual (cost/hours) > Budget
- Surplus: Forecasted (cost/hours) <= Budget
- Rejected and non-billable log hours are not included while calculating Actual hours and Actual cost.
- When team members log time for the task, it will automatically calculate the actual cost of the approved billable hours.
Track Budget Overruns
Navigate to the respective module (Task/ Milestone), click and select Overrun from Budget field. The log hours can be marked as billable in case a cost is charged to the client and as non-billable to indicate that the hours are not charged. When team members log time for the task, it will automatically calculate the actual cost of the approved billable hours. This updates the budget in real time. You might have to approve or reject timesheet records to ensure budget is calculated accurately.
- At Risk: (Actual < Budget) && (Forecasted (cost/hours) > Budget)
- Overrun: Actual (cost/hours) > Budget
- Surplus: Forecasted (cost/hours) <= Budget
You can view these tags either in the dashboard or filter your projects based on the tags.
- Rejected and non-billable log hours are not included while calculating Actual hours and Actual cost.
- When team members log time for the task, it will automatically calculate the actual cost of the approved billable hours.
Places to View budget Inside Zoho Projects
View your project budget in the following locations,
- Project list page shows the consolidated budget for tasks and issues.
- Task and Milestone list view shows the planned and actual cost or hours computation for the list of tasks and milestones in your project.
- Task and task list detailed view provides the planned and actual calculation for that particular task.
- View the Budget Status graph on the Dashboard page of your project.
- You can view the budget forecast in your project list page, task, task list, and milestones detail page, Budget Status graph, and in the overview section on the dashboard.
You can track your project costs with budgets and deliver on time without hassles by managing the planned and actual cost. This allows more accurate planning for future projects, based on the available funds and team bandwidth.
