Expenditure Profile
A further aspect of Project Management is the need to control the costs of a project by comparing the actual costs to date with the planned costs and to be able to forecast the planned expenditure profile to the completion of a project.
Budgeting and cost control procedures comprise the estimation of costs (Scheduled Cost), the setting of an agreed budget (Baseline Cost), and the management of actual and forecast costs against that budget.
COST TYPES
CS Project has a number of Cost Fields to assist with expenditure forecast.
Fixed Task Costs
Fixed Costs may be entered against the activity itself in the Activity Details - Advanced Window. Such costs may reflect Sub Contract fees, Office Costs etc.
By default the Fixed Cost is spread evenly (Pro-rated) over the duration of the task, but can be changed to Front or Back loaded in Professional Edition. Go to Activity Details > Advanced Tab.
Estimated Resource Costs
This allows you to enter the labour resource cost for an activity, as opposed to deriving it from the labour resource assignments, and is hence useful if you do not wish to assign resources but still require the control over resource costs. This field is used in conjunction with the flag “Plan Resource Cost at this level”.
Actual and Remaining Cost
The total actual cost of an activity is made up by the sum of the actual costs of all the resources assigned as well as the actual fixed cost. This field cannot be modified directly. The remaining cost is that which still has to be incurred to finish the task.
Baseline Cost
Total budgeted cost for the activity. This value is copied from the Scheduled Cost field when the Store Baseline option on the Tools menu is used.
Revenue
Expected Revenue may be entered against each task. By default the Revenue is spread evenly (Pro-rated) over the duration of the task, but can be changed to Front or Back loaded in the Professional Edition. Go to Activity Details > Advanced Tab.
Displaying the Cost Histogram
Having assigned costs to resources and/or tasks we can view the rate of expenditure or a summation of costs for specific activities using the Histogram Window. To view the Histogram in the lower window pane of CS Project Planning or Professional, click on the blue diagonal arrows in the Status Bar at the bottom of screen, this will open the lower pane.
The graph can be changed via View > Display Histogram Options.
If using the standard CS Project Template layout, you will have a number of pre-defined Histogram views – select Scheduled Cost.
When the lower Histogram pane is active, you can click on the icon to the left of the Histogram drop-down menu to enable editing of the Histogram/Cost Graph, or more simply clicking the right mouse button in the active Histogram window.
The additional data fields now open to you include Actual Costs, Scheduled Costs, Late Scheduled Costs, Revenue and Cash Flow. This combination can then be shown as either cumulative or period based although it is more usual to display cumulative curves for costs.
As with resources, the colour, pattern and shading of each data set can be defined. In this example, both the Periodic Cost per week is shown, overlaid with the Overall Cumulative Spend in Blue.
Note: The Cumulative Black curve indicates the original Budget Cost, and the cumulative Red curve indicates Actual Cost to Date.
CS Project PROFESSIONAL Edition Cost Reports
In CS Project Professional, there are additional Cost Reports available.
Go to Reports > Resource Cost Report
Select Monthly Activity Spend (if using the standard CS Project Template layout).
When previewed, the spend per selected activity per time period (e.g. Month) is calculated. Summary Tasks display the accrual of sub activities.
