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To more readily locate variances between contract amount and budget amounts, be ideal if there was a box at the bottom of the detailed management report report set up that sorted the current budget amount and posted costs by cost type. Been running separate cost and billing summary report to try and locate what is happening at the cost type level as well as the cost code level and vice versa. Need a report that summarizes contract, budget, and actual cost amounts while providing some detail of the big picture.
Quentin Huisman
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Curtis, tracking with you on this as well. Just today, was in trying to modify fields to the management report to show quantities completed compared to bid, material budget to actual costs, and cost to completion. Not readily finding that the fields needed to summarize operations for a supervisor or foreman isn't easy to find or produce. So far it appears that WIP datasets, budget datasets, and financial datasets are not available in one master dataset???
It would be great to also allow forecasting by cost type. I just created a suggestion called "Allow Forecasting by Cost Type". Then in the management report, you could have a summary of budgeted costs by cost type, then actual costs by cost type, then projected cost by cost type. Currently we have to do extra reports in excel, very cumbersome.
While the project status report does have budgeted and posted cost it has three limitations/issues that i see:
1) The format does not lend itself to being able to quickly scan through the cost codes. More columns, less rows. I attached a sample format that I think would be much easier on the eyes. I just ran the job status report for one project and it was a 30 page report. I was looking at a $2M dollar project, so it's a decent size job, but if you get into something really complex the report size could get much larger.
2) The variance is not calculated for you, so you have to do the math. Yes, you can report only over budget items which is great, but I want to look at under budget items as well to see where (and why) I'm making money. It's just as important to know where and how you make money as it is to know where and how you lose money.
3) This is a minor thing, but as with the management report, this only has a through date. It would be great to be able to run a report for a snapshot in time.
Have you looked at the Project Status report? This report has the billing band similar to the Management report, but the Cost Code level information is broken out by cost type. There is also a prompt - Show only cost codes over budget when running. My data is not very good, but I have attached a sample. Let us know if this may work or not.
Chris is on point, run Cost & Billing all the time and it gets to be a very long report. Reporting needs something in-between. The Management Report readily displays Contract Amounts, Billing-To-Date, and variance by cost code. The question usually from management is 'Was the over/under due to labor, materials, subcontractor, equipment costs, etc?' To answer this question report reader has to go through a cost detail report to understand what did//didn't happen at the cost code level.
Jason - The Cost & Billing Detail Report is great for a transaction level detail, but scanning through 50+ pages of transaction level detail (even if it is summarized at the end of each cost code) is not an efficient means of analyzing cost v. budget variances at a cost code level. A summary report similar to the management report that breaks down budgets by cost type would be a terrific mid-level to help in analyzing costs.
Have you tried the "Cost & Billing Detail Report", with the selected option for "Include Totals by Cost Type"? This may get you what you are looking for, or at least may get you closer to what you need.