While you deliver
Budget vs Actual Analyzer
Read a project cost report with the commitments counted, so a line heading over shows up before the invoices land, not after.
Read a cost report as .xlsx or .csv, one row per budget line, inside your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
Cost report
Drop a spreadsheet here
One row per budget line, with a budget and actual spend. Commitments, an estimate to complete and percent complete if you have them.
The floor under every forecast
A purchase order or a signed contract is money spent in all but timing. A report that compares budget with actual spend alone shows a line as comfortable right up to the month the invoices arrive. The tool sets a floor under every line: its forecast can never be lower than what is already spent plus what is already committed. Where the file’s own forecast or estimate to complete comes in under that floor, the tool says so.
Four ways a line goes wrong
Already over, where spend alone has passed the budget. Committed over, where spend plus commitments pass it before any more work is done. Heading over, where nothing is over yet but the forecast is. And spending ahead of progress, where the share of the budget spent runs well past the share of the work done, which is the earliest warning a cost report can give.
Estimates to complete, two ways
Some cost reports write the estimate to complete as everything still to pay, commitments included; others write it as what remains beyond the commitments. The same number means different forecasts. The tool works out which the file uses from the lines that have both, says which it chose, and lets you change it.
Contingency
Contingency lines are not forecast like work. What they have spent counts; what is left is set against the net overrun on the other lines, so the report says plainly whether the reserve covers what is coming. With an original budget column, it also shows how much has moved out of contingency, and flags budgets that grew by more than contingency fell.
What this does not do
It does not know about invoices not yet entered, or commitments not yet raised; the floor is only as good as the report. Projecting cost from percent complete trusts the progress figure, which is often optimistic. And whether to draw down contingency, or where a transfer should come from, is a decision for whoever holds the budget. For earned value, schedule performance and the estimate-at-completion formulas, use the Earned Value Calculator.