About
In this article we are going to dive into the Budget information tab of your Precursive Projects and Phases to understand where this data is pulled from.
If you can find this tab
both on your Precursive Project records and Phase records so, what's the difference between the two?
If a Project only has 1 Phase, there is actually no difference between the two:
they only differ if a Project has multiple Phases. In that case, in each Phase record you can find the Financials/Budget Information relevant to that particular Phase and on the Project record you will find the sum of the total planned and actuals for all the Phases of that project.
As you can see from the picture above, in the 'Budget Information'/'Project Financials' tab you can find:
- 2 vertical sections - the forecast numbers VS actual numbers - and
- Up to 3 horizontal sections - one relevant to revenue, cost, project and margin, one to time and one, budget.
Note - Being 100% Salesforce-native, Precursive is highly customizable, which means that this tab may be called in a different way on your org or the data may be organized in a slightly different way. I recommend you open your org and you look for a tab on your project records that look more or less like the one above. How many horizontal sections do your tabs have and what information is stored there?
How are these Numbers Forecast?
Here's an overview of where the numbers on the Forecast column are pulled from or how they are calculated:
How is Planned Revenue Calculated?
Planned (and Actual) Revenue is calculated differently depending on the Budget Method: whether a Project is sold as Fixed Price or Time & Material.
How is Planned Time Calculated?
As per the
Planned Time, which affects Forecast Cost and also Forecast Revenue in T&M Projects - its calculation depends on what Precursive product has been purchased and on the Resourcing Mode has been selected on a Project's Phase (
Managed VS Independent Mode). Specific customizations aside, that differs according to the 2 cases below:
- PSX and Connect Platform with Independent Resourcing Mode. You have either purchased PSX only (so you don't use Precursive Boards to templetize and run your project) OR you have purchased the Connected Precursive Platform (which includes Precursive Boards), but you run the resourcing independently from them (Independent Resourcing Mode). In this case, the Planned Time is calculated as the sum of all the Bookings manually created for each Project Phase. These are defined and added by Resource Managers upon Project Creation - please see Add Booking or Resource Request for more information.
- Connect Managed Resourcing Mode. You have purchased the Connected platform and your resourcing is managed from the Precursive Board associated to the project's Phase (Managed Mode). In this case, Planned Time is calculated as the sum of all the 'Estimated Hours' added for each Precursive Task in the Task Template associated to the Board Type used for creating the Precursive Board of each Project's Phase. These are defined during the implementation of the Precursive Platform.
How is a Project Budgeted?
Use case: you have sold an amount of consulting hours/days or managed services for a year that a customer can ask for at any time. You can use budget time to make sure you don't provide more hours than purchased by the customer.
You can also set a Budget in Fees for any project type to quickly keep track of your remaining budget and make sure you take necessary action if a project is exceeding that budget and is no longer profitable.
You can decide to budget Project Phases in:
- Budget in Fees
- Budget in Hours
- Budget in Days
You can add your budget manually directly on the Phase record, on the Details page. You can add values to each relevant fields.
Note - Whether you need to add budget in days or hours depends on the Budget Unit selected on the Details page of the Project:
- Budget Unit = Days --> add value as 'Budget in Days'
- Budget Unit = Hours --> add value as 'Budget in Hours'
How are the Actual Numbers Calculated?
Once the Project Collaborators start submitting their Timesheets and project-related Expenses, the fields in the 'Actual' column on the ‘Budget Information’ Tab of the Project and Phases records are automatically populated. Here's an overview of where the numbers on the Actuals column are pulled from or how they are calculated:
Note - The Actual Time calculations depends on the time logged in the Timesheets. By default, the system only pulls data from Submitted & Approved Timesheets (Timesheet Statuses). However, you can decide to also pull data from Timesheets that haven't been submitted yet. The default settings can be changed to include more Timesheet Statues in the 'Precursive Settings' ('Precursive HQ' Tab) by Precursive Super Users, who have permissions to edit.
How can you Change the Budget Method?
As you can see from the images above, how the Forecast and Actual Revenue is calculated depends on the Budget Method of each Project: Fixed Price or Time & Material.
The Budget Method can be selected upon project creation or changed after. That is defined by a field on the Project object called 'Budget Method'. You can find it or add it to the Details tab of your Project page and it can also be added to the relevant field set to appear on the Project creation modal.
Related Resources
