New User: Budget?

[vmagal1]

How do I add a budget amount to a project plan?

 

[RTucker]

The "real" answer is complex and involves effective planning of tasks, work
effort, resources, resource unit costs, plus fixed costs.

If you are not going to track planned and actual work for resources, the
simple answer may be:
Show the Fixed Cost column on a table and enter your budget values into that
field for each task. Enter actuals into the Actual Cost column. But don't
resource load or collect actual hours, or your AC will be overwritten.

Anyone out there, feel free to correct me if this is bad advice.

Richard :>)

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

The term "budget" is a bit problematic when dealing with MS Project. The
everyday usage of the term connotates a maximum dollar amount one is allowed
to spend as allocated though some top-down process to distribute monetary
resources to the various activities of the firm, which is not quite what
Project means by the term. Project's budget is a bottom-up estimate based
on projected costs of the materials to be consumed and the labour to be
performed for each activity, rolled up into the summary level and project
levels to compute total amounts. Fixed costs are a portion of those
budgeted costs, representing projected costs associated with tasks and
summary tasks but that fall outside the materials and labour categories -
rent on office space or airfare for a trip for example. Once the projected
costs are saved as a baseline you can think of them as a top-down budget as
presumably that baselineing only happened after you've submitted your
projections for senior management approval and they've come back with a go
decision authorizing you to spend that amount. If the "budget" is actually
that first top-down estimate based on a distribution of projected revenues
rather than an estimate of required expenditures, I'd suggest using one of
the use-defined Cost fields to hold it so I have it handy to compare mny
estimates to. If the estimates are less than the budget, great! If the
estimates are greater than the budget and managment won't negotiate on
budget or scope, update the resume!