Reviewing Project Costs
By assigning work, material, and cost resources to tasks,
Project can calculate the price tag for your project. You can show
costs in many of the standard views by applying a table with cost
fields. For example, the Gantt Chart view shows both costs for the entire project and individual tasks. The Cost table applied to a usage view shows the cost of individual assignments.
Here are a few ways to review project costs:
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Reviewing total project cost
.
If the total price is the only thing that matters, look at the cost for
the entire project. The project summary task is an easy way to see
project-wide cost (Viewing the total project cost in the project summary task).
Display the project summary task by choosing Format→Show/Hide and then
turning on the Project Summary Task checkbox. When you’re ready to
compare estimated cost to actual cost, the Project Statistics dialog box (Viewing the total project cost in the project summary task) can’t be beat.
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Seeing costs in the table area. Apply the Cost table by choosing View→Data→Tables→Cost. As shown in Figure 3, the Total Cost cell for the project summary task represents the total cost of the project.
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Review project statistics. The Project Statistics dialog box (Checking Status at the Project Level) provides an overview of project status. To open it, choose Project→Properties→Project Information, and then click Statistics.
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Displaying task and assignment costs
. To see task and assignment costs, simply apply the Cost table to the appropriate view (Changing Table Contents).
The Cost table includes columns for planned and actual costs. For
example, Baseline shows the cost when you saved the baseline, Actual is
the actual cost for work completed so far, and Variance is the
difference between the baseline and the current scheduled cost.
The view you apply depends on which costs you want to see. If you
apply the Cost table to task-oriented views, the table area shows task
costs. In the Task Usage and Resource Usage views, the Cost table shows
the total cost by task and assignment, while the timescale shows values
for each time period, as shown in Figure 4.
Using Project cost reports
Project includes several reports that show you project
costs—both text reports and the visual reports. You can use these
reports to look at cost for tasks and assignments or to evaluate cash
flow over time. Whether text or visual, budget reports show overall cost, while cash flow reports show cost by time period. You can choose from the following reports:
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Budget report.
The text-based Budget report is like a hard copy of the Cost table. It
shows total cost, baseline, and actual costs for each task. One
difference is that this report sorts tasks by total cost in descending
order, which can be helpful for finding tasks that may be breaking your
budget.
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Cash Flow report. The text-based Cash Flow report shows Total Cost by week. The last row in the report sums the weekly total costs for all tasks. The last column in the report shows total cost for each task over the full project duration.
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Budget Cost Report visual report
. This report
displays costs in an Excel pivot table. The Chart1 worksheet contains a
Microsoft Excel chart that initially shows cost by quarter. Display the
Assignment Usage worksheet to view the data behind the chart and to use
pivot table tools to modify the costs you see (Filtering the data that appears).
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Cash Flow Report visual report
. Project has one
Excel-based cash flow visual report and two Microsoft Visio visual
reports (one metric and one using US dimensions). Cash Flow Report is
an Excel pivot table rendition of project costs initially by quarter, as shown in Figure 5.
To open a text-based cost report, choose Project→Reports→Reports. In the Reports dialog box, double-click Costs. In the Cost
Reports dialog box, double-click the report you want to see. To open a
visual report, choose Project→Reports→Visual Reports. In the Visual
Reports dialog box, double-click the name of the visual report you want
to generate.
