Project and phase budgeting allows you to store and compare planned and actual values for time, fees, costs, expenses and outlays at the project level or at the level of individual project phases. This gives you a transparent overview of budget values and allows you to identify budget variances at an early stage.
Enables targeted comparison of operations through planned/actual analysis
Supports controlling and contribution margin calculations at project and phase level
Includes both external and internal values for complete budget control
Project phases at a glance
How project and phase budgeting works
Entering and planning budget values
In Vertec, you can set different budget values for an entire project or individual project phases. These include:
Internal fees (theoretically billable amount without adjustments)
Operating costs (standard costs, e.g. labour costs) for internal cost accounting
Expenses and outlays – in each case as deductible amounts and internal costs
Transparency through plan/actual comparison
By entering actual values, planned budget values can be compared directly. This allows you to immediately identify budget overruns and take appropriate action.
Logging of budgeted value changes
Vertec logs changes to budget values for individual project phases, which is particularly useful for iterative planning or proof-of-concept calculations. This allows you to track the development of budget values over time at any time.
Many consulting companies do not get the whole picture. This is means, there is no quick access to valuable information such as:
What is the status of my projects? Who worked on which project for how many hours? Did all employees record their time correctly? If irregularities occur, following processes such as billing and controlling may be delayed.
The problem spreads further. How much project budget is still available? Which ones of the ongoing projects are actually the most profitable? Will there be enough human resources available in the near future to accept more projects?
Keep an overview with lean controlling
Vertec lights up the dark and offers you clear and easy to understand project controlling that answers the questions mentioned and even others quickly. At the touch of a button, all the KPIs become available. With Vertec being an integrated CRM and ERP system, fees, costs, contribution margins and much more can clearly be visualized.
Extended customer requirements or new constellations or change requests often lead to higher work load in larger projects and thus to subsequent budget adjustments. In order to maintain a holistic view of the project and to be able to quickly see in the review when exactly budget changes have occurred, the adjustment of these values need to be recorded in Vertec.
With Vertec, you can specify budget adjustments in one project phase. The change log shows the old and new value, a comment or remark, and the respective user. Alternatively, you can open another phase in the project, where you can record any additional time or performance which is over the previously defined budget.
Project status meetings are always time-consuming: extensive Excel spreadsheets need to be maintained, and project leaders have to update the figures before the deadline. Budget, recorded time and services, invoiced services, purchases, completion rates and personal assessment of a project are fixed components. But as soon as the project status meeting is over, the status report is already outdated again. The project status is constantly changing.
With Vertec, as a project management software, all involved employees always know the up-to-date status of a project. The most important KPIs such as TARGET/ACTUAL comparison of the budget, completion rate, completion status of individual tasks (activities), open task and third-party costs as well as resource availability are entered centrally.
In order to keep an eye on the margins, profitability, and completion date of a project, budget controlling and completion rate are critical factors. In Vertec, the completion rate of a project is ideally determined by comparing missing recorded time with the remaining available budget. For some projects, earned value analysis can be used to determine the value of the projects. This also allows for accrual of benefits for closing transactions.
In Vertec, you can also implement your individual project controlling and easily add special requirements. Tasks can be managed on a project-by-project basis and allocated to the responsible employees. With Vertec Resource Planning, you can also see the availability of staff and the current planning on the respective projects.
