Beginning Budget

[Edleonard8]

Is there a way to enter a beginning budget at the start of
a project and have MS Project periodically deduct from
that figure with each new event?

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

The budget in Project is a bottom-up calculation of what the project will
cost, not a top-down accounting of how much you're allowed to spend. So the
answer is no, sorry.

 

[Al Wallace]

Steve is right, but this is how I go about monitoring the budget:

1. Enter your resource/cost info into Project (I even put in travel costs,
license fees, etc.)
2. Each month update the % complete field for each of your tasks. You may
have to play with these a little bit if you're looking at a bunch of
partially complete tasks and you have each task budgeted for a specific
amount, but you should be able to get very close...
3. Add the Remaining Costs field to the display.

I use this method all the time for PMing and it always gives me a reasonably
accurate picture of how much work is left to be done, how much that work will
cost and I then compare that to the dollars I have left to see if we're going
to make it w/in budget or we have to make adjustments somewhere.

Hope this helps,

Al