Project Management Report - Budget

An important part of any Project Management Report are the Project Issues which are covered in more detail in the Project Management Budget">.

Project Management Budget Reporting

This can get really complicated for larger projects. However most projects are small as will be the budget, which means that it should be extremely easy to fill this in. Further at many companies, the PMO will not expect this level of reporting on the budget each week.

However it is vital that you as the Project Manager have a clear idea of the project “burn rate” ie how much money is being spent on the project and at what rate, as otherwise you could find yourself rapidly running out of budget before the project is even 50% delivered. I actually know of colleagues this has happened to!

Budget Reporting – Capex

This enables you to report on all your fixed overhead costs like equipment such as servers and PC’s. This is particularly relevant on Infrastructure Projects where an enormous amount of Servers, Routers and Connectivity are purchased to be installed, as well as Software Upgrade Projects.

Budget Reporting – Opex

This report is related to your spend on matters such as Resourcing and Research. Often companies will ask you to break the Resourcing cost down into Permanent Staff, and Contractor or Freelance Staff. This enables Finance to get a breakdown of the resourcing profile the project is using, which enables them to quantify through the PMO any savings which could be accrued from swapping resources around.

Project Management Reporting Budget Tip

If you don’t have to fill this report in each week then don’t and certainly don’t volunteer to! Too many novice Project Manager’s feel the need to diligently fill this in each week to show the PMO how on top of the budget they are. However any experienced Project Manager will tell you that on every project there will always be problems with the budget because when you actually get down to do the work it often makes sense to use different resources or do them in a different order. This will often cause anomalies in the forecast budget and cause you many headaches with Finance who often have no idea what your explanation means.

So save yourself time and effort by being deliberately vague in your Budget reporting. Just make sure thought that when the project completes, the budget finally adds up!