tracking budget of year long project fund

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Hopefully I can present my question clearly. I am trying to create a
schedule for a year long project. The project has a set amount of money that
must be spent but at the same time can not go over budget.

The schedule of the project is ever-changing, tasks are deleted and added
all of the time and therefore money for things gets shifted around within the
project regularly. There is no way to predict how much money is going to be
spent on each itask until it is spent, the only certainty is how much will be
spent overall.

I need to setup the project so as to see what is planned to be spent, what
hast actuall been spent, how much is left in the budget and I need to earned
value analysis as well.

The tasks are most likely going to be fixed duration and will be tracked via
%complete.

Also, if the solution requires me to create a custom field for this project,
I am wondering how projects with locall custom fields are handled when put in
to Project server?

 

[Jim Aksel]

I will try to confine my comments to MS Project. Establishment of a firm
baseline with agreed to budgets/technical performance-scope/timeframe are
critical if a baseline is to mean anything.

Baseline is created Tools/Tracking/Save Baseline...
Use %Work Complete for EV since it is marking against work, %Complete marks
against a linear progression of time.

Establish a column such as Text 1 to represent an accounting code. You need
to have a cost collection system with appropriate granularity to reveal costs
at the level you want to track them in MS Project (at the task level)

Make sure Actual Costs are manual entry. Tools/Options... DE-select
"Actual Costs are always calculated by MS Project'

Enter your costs manually into the Actual Cost column as reconciled from
your cost collection tools.

Use the Remaing Work column for the team to enter the hours they think they
have "left to go" on a task. This will override the baseline total work and
give you a decent good crack at EAC.

You can have a good estimate of remaing budget because "Baseline Cost" is
your total allowed spend, and you have a ACWP column and a Remaing Cost
Column. Remaining Cost is calculated by MS Project from Remaining Work.

Consider a custom formula: Cost1=ACWP + [Remaining Cost] since both are
driven by entries you can control. ACWP calculates from Actual Cost which
you got from yoru accounting system.

Similarly, you can have another Cost2=[Baseline Cost] - ACWP which tells you
the money that is left in the budget.

Keep a Management Reserve, sounds like you'll need it. Well, that's a start
for MS Project. If you need other Program Management help on establishing
baselines, etc, then we can handle that off line.

Jim Aksel, PMP