Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual

Is the Project Within Budget?

Checking cost status isn’t as simple as seeing whether there’s money in your wallet. When budgeted dollars run out in one place, accounting procedures sometimes grab money from another place. By tracking cost and budget resources in Project, you can follow project money without depending on your finance department. And if you work in a relatively simple financial environment, cost variance and other earned value measures may be enough. This section describes different ways to compare cost expenditures to the baseline costs you set.

As you learned earlier, the project summary task shows the cost variance for an entire project—that is, the difference between scheduled and baseline costs. If this variance is positive, then the project is forecasted to be over budget. Unless the project is almost over, you may still have time to reduce costs. (A negative cost variance means the project may come in under budget, although that outcome isn’t assured until the project is complete.) This section explains how to dig deeper into your project’s cost status if the project summary task shows that costs are over budget.

Comparing Costs Using Views and Filters

Similar to the way they help you look for over-budget work, Project’s tables, filters, and reports can help you find expanding costs. The box on Focusing on Big Money Problems explains how to focus on your project’s biggest cost overruns. Here are two of Project’s built-in elements that show costs:

• Cost table. This ...