Determine If Tasks Cost More or Less Than Budgeted

If you’re managing costs in your project, either by assigning fixed costs to tasks or by assigning wages to resources, you’re probably interested in tasks that are accruing more cost than budgeted. By closely tracking your project costs, you can catch cost overruns early and adjust either your schedule or your budget accordingly.

After you enter costs for tasks and resources and assign resources to tasks, Microsoft Project calculates the cost of each resource’s work, the total cost for each task and resource, and the total project cost. All of these costs are considered scheduled or projected costs. Scheduled costs reflect the latest cost picture as the project progresses.

Microsoft Project also calculates remaining costs. The remaining cost is the scheduled cost minus the actual cost.

To determine if tasks cost more or less than budgeted

1. On the View Bar, click Gantt Chart .
2. On the View menu, point to Table, and then click Cost.
3. Drag the divider bar to the right to view the Total Cost and Baseline fields.
4. Compare the values in the Total Cost and Baseline fields.
5. For the cost variance, look at the value in the Variance field.

©1996-1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.