Insights Classic: Margin & Cost Dashboard

Overview

The Margin & Cost dashboard reveals business-critical information, such as your organization's profit and loss down to the project-level. This information can help determine whether a project is worth continuing.

The standard Margin and Cost tabs are, in order from most to least used:

• T&M Margin Contribution
• Project Margin at Completion (Project Budget Method)
• Fixed Fee
• Resource Schedule Method
• Resource Allocation Method
• Percent Complete Method

T&M Margin Contribution

The Time and Materials (T&M) Margin Contribution tab contains reports that show a month-by-month breakdown of each time and materials project by fees, cost, and margin. Note that non-billable expenses are treated as a cost against the project. 

The Margin Table: T&M table shows two important things: the complete to-date margin for each project with Time & Materials tasks (or time applied without a task), and the fees and costs for the life of the project. Since the Date filter is ignored in this table, the rollup margin may differ from the headline margin. 

Project Margin at Completion (Project Budget Method)

The Project Margin at Completion (Project Budget Method) tab is helpful if your business is primarily a fixed fee business. You get a breakdown of project cost to date and Estimate at Completion (EAC) cost, or what has already been spent and is expected to be spent by the time the project is complete.

The Fee and Cost Burn Against Budget: Project Level graph gives you a visual representation of all of your project's margins, which can help you reveal potential issues early. 

Use the Project Based EAC Margin table to see your EAC cost and margin. 

Fixed Fee

Reports in the Fixed Fee Margin Contribution to Date tab provide a monthly cost-to-date breakdown so you can quickly see the fixed fee revenue vs. the burn vs. the cost all in one graph.

The dates for the Monthly Burn vs. Budget: Fixed Tasks and Completed Fixed Fee Tasks - Earned (by Complete Date) graphs are independent, meaning you can change the date range for one without impacting the other. This is useful for calculating your revenue recognition.

The Monthly Burn vs. Budget: Fixed Tasks graph compares the cost incurred on all fixed fee tasks during a specified month to the value of tasks due during that month. 

The Completed Fixed Fee Tasks - Earned (by Complete Date) graph displays the earned value of tasks completed (task budget in the month completed), and all costs and fees incurred on completed tasks, regardless of the month incurred. In other words, if you have a task that was worked on in April and May, but it wasn’t marked as complete until July, the full cost of the task appears for July.

Use the Fixed Fee Tasks (Completions and In-Process) table to see total budgets rolled up from all fixed fee tasks, the value of budgets on completed tasks, and all costs accumulated to date. 

Resource Schedule Method

The Resource Schedule Method looks at cost-to-date and the projected cost from resources scheduled on tasks. Use this equation to calculate your resource schedule cost:  

Then you can find your margin for the Resource Schedule Method with this equation: 

Reports in the Projected Margin at Completion (Resource Schedule Method) tab provide a visual comparison of the project budget over time. Use the Fee and Cost Burn Against Budget: Project and Task graph to see fees and cost-to-date. 

The Actual + Schedule Method table shows projected margins based on actual and scheduled hours. This lets you see how project budgets compare against a roll-up of budgets from each task.

Resource Allocation Method

The Resource Allocation Method calculates the margin based on the project-level budget. The method looks at cost-to-date and the projected cost from resources allocated in the future. Your resource allocation cost is calculated using this equation:  

Then you can find your margin for the Resource Allocation Method using this equation: 

The Project Margin at Completion (Resource Allocation Method) tab is a mirror view of the Resource Scheduled Method tab with one important difference: projected costs and fees are calculated using allocated hours, not scheduled hours. 

Percent Complete Method

The Percent Complete Method looks at cost-to-date and the projected cost, calculated via manual percent complete entries on each task. Percent complete for tasks is found in the display drop-down in Task Tracker > Task Progress.

Use this equation to calculate your percent complete cost:

Then you can find your margin for the Percent Complete Method using this equation:

The Project Margin at Completion (Percent Complete Method) tab contains reports that show a roll-up of margins to the project from task-level calculations.