While you deliver
Labor Burn Forecast
Turn a staffing plan into what it costs, month by month, and find out whether the budget lasts to the end, or the day it runs out.
Open the staffing plan: one row per person or role for a stretch of time, with an allocation, from and to dates, and an hourly or daily rate. It is read inside your browser; nothing is uploaded.
Staffing plan
Drop a spreadsheet here
One row per person or role for a stretch of time: allocation (100%, 0.5), from and to dates, and a rate per hour or per day. A person whose rate or allocation changes gets a row for each stretch.
Cost follows the calendar, not the months
A month of a contractor is not a fixed amount: February has fewer working days than March, and a December with two holidays costs less than a full one. Staffing plans are usually costed at a flat monthly figure, and the error builds over a year. Here every working day on your calendar is costed: each person’s share of the day, times the hours in it, times their rate on that day, then added up by month.
Rates change
A person whose allocation or rate changes partway through gets a row for each stretch. A rise for everyone from a date, like an annual increase, is a setting. Both show in the months they affect, and nowhere else.
When the money runs out
With a labor budget, the page compares the whole plan with it. With the amount spent so far and the date it runs to, it forecasts from reality instead: actual spend, then the plan from the next day on. Spending ahead of plan is shown for what it is, and if the total passes the budget, the page gives the day the money runs out, while there is still time to do something about it.
The planned value curve
The running total of planned cost is exactly the planned value an earned value analysis measures against. The download has it by month, ready for the Earned Value Calculator.
What this does not do
It costs labor only: materials, licenses and other costs belong in the Budget vs Actual Analyzer. It does not take out holidays and leave by person, which the Resource Capacity Planner does; the plan is costed as staffed. And it forecasts from the plan, so a plan that is already wrong about who is needed gives a forecast that is wrong the same way.