By now you probably have Added Tasks and Budget information to your Project. You're working to your budget and now you'd like to analyse your costs, understand the remaining spend on your budget, and get an immediate performance check on your Project.
Analyse
All cash flow tables struggle with ongoing changes during a project, and the Analyse tool allows for early analysis as well as quick updates at any point in time during the project.
You can select a period of time, choose an individual project or multiple, and quickly see what was budgeted vs. what was actually spent. This is a powerhouse because it not only allows you to look back at budget vs. spend but also forecasts what percentage of your budget is allocated for a future time period.
Analyse on the left side menu is where you can get a quick view of Cost Vs. Budget for your Projects in any given time period. Just make the following selections at the top of the screen and click Get Data to see your analysis.
Select Project | Choose one or more projects to include in the analysis. You may have multiple projects for one client and would like to report on their total book of business. |
Period | Select a Start Date - End Date for the timeframe you want to analyse. |
View At Cost | Exclude any Project Margins (from Project Creation) and Labour Rates (in User Management Settings) from the chart. |
View At Price | Include any Project Margins (Contract / Variation %) and Labour Rates that were entered during Project Creation. |
The resulting chart provides a breakdown of your price or costs vs. budgeted amounts for both Labour and Supplier costs. Click the plus (+) button to expand the categories and see costs broken out into cost centres.
Category | Supplier vs. Labour costs, broken down further into cost centres |
Total Task Budget | Entirety of budget for all tasks in a specific category or cost centre |
Budget In Period | Total Task Budget in the time period you selected |
Exhausted | Exhausted spend is a total of all cost (materials, contractor, labour, equipment) already used |
Variance | The remaining spend. It's the Budget less Exhausted amount. Provides an immediate performance check. |
% | Amount of total budget for that particular cost centre |
Any adjustments needed on the Gantt can be quickly made to better reflect the actual events; e.g. the joinery deposit was pulled forward by ten days, which affects the analysis.
Even more, you can get a very quick understanding of whether costs for periods to come are from labour costs or suppliers (materials/contractors/equipment).
Planning
The Planning tab is a Gantt chart for every task associated with that Project.
Each task in the Gantt is tracked to every Xero bill and labour timesheet for the project. Clicking on any task in the Gantt will show the total budget, and breakout of labor, material, contractor, and equipment costs compared to their budgeted amounts.
These intertwined elements make the Planning Gantt a highly detailed project tracker, providing a detailed project analysis accurately and quickly.
Learn more ways to visualize your project data in this article on One Click Reporting.