Projects Costs Calculation and Control M3 Excel Template

Projects Costs Calculation and Control M3 Excel Template.

One of the most popular tools implemented in CASHTRAINERS for companies that work with projects.

What kind of companies is this management tool aimed at?

This Excel template is mainly aimed at architectural firms, engineering studios, software development companies, technology companies, interior decorators, gardening and landscaping companies … Thus, it is aimed for every company that works with projects.

Why to manage the profitability of projects with Excel?

The main reason is the cost, a tool with these characteristics in Excel has a very low cost, in an ERP the development and integration of a similar tool the cost is very high.

Another factor is the time, with this tool performed in Excel you can start working from the first day of the acquisition. Meanwhile a management program or an ERP requires months for design, development, testing, launching, training …

And the last aspect and no less important is the learning curve, having it integrated in an ERP or management program has many advantages as long as it is used properly. From my experience I have implemented these fantastic systems in ERPs, but it takes a long time for the staff to understand and apply them correctly. The learning curve is high, which means spending time and resources to get the most out of it.

However, with the Excel tool the learning curve is practically non-existent, firstly because practically every professional working in a company is used working with Excel, and secondly because the tool is so simple and intuitive that in a matter of few Hours is already controlled perfectly.

What benefits will you get with this tool?

The objective of this tool is to calculate the forecast or budget of costs and margins by project and to assign the actual revenue and costs to it in order to analyze the deviations, letting on to know the individual gross margin for every project and the global profitability for the stablished year.

What features does this tool have by default?

The default application is designed to perform the forecast and control of costs and margins up to 300 projects per year. Therefore you have a global vision of the expected gross margin and the actual for a whole year.

In each project we can plan the work for tasks linked with employees, with capacity up to 30 tasks, or if you do not work with tasks you can plan the work of 30 employees. Then we can calculate the expected cost of personnel based on the number of expected hours of work.

In the case that tasks are assigned, the expected start and end date of each task can be controlled in a visual Gantt chart.

If, in addition to working hours, the project consumes subcontracted materials, products or services, a forecast of consumption costs can also be included, with a capacity of up to 30 items per project.

Once the cost forecasts have been completed, it is possible to calculate the sale price based on a percentage of the planned costs or simply by entering the price manually.

The allocation of real hours is done from a single table to facilitate data recording (It can accommodate up to 6,000 records)

In the table you can select the project on which you have worked through a drop-down to link the employee working hours with the project, consequently the actual hours of the employee are recorded, the task can be included in the case that the company uses them.

In order to registry the actual revenues and expenses the procedure is the same as in the record of hours, a table is used to select the project and the type, revenue or expense, and the amount is assigned directly to the project.

Inside the project in a summary table we can analyze the expected margin versus the actual margin.