What is a Budget?

A budget represents the amount of money available for a project, often broken down into sub-budgets represented by a phase, stage or work element. Often, the budget is calculated based on estimates and approved by executives in a business case.

With a budget, the project has an outline of how much money can be committed to executing work. Projects will report on progress back to this budget, and any variances.

Problems Managing Budgets

Common challenges we see when managing budgets:

❌ Tracking Contracts & Commitments: Tracking contracts and commitments across multiple budgets using spreadsheets is error-prone and cumbersome.

❌ Managing Budget Changes: Adjusting and reallocating budgets to reflect contracted scope creates increasingly complex and unwieldy spreadsheets.‍

❌ Forecasting & S Curves: Accurate forecasting of future costs, including uncommitted amounts, risks, and contingencies, is challenging and often inaccurate.‍

❌ Managing and Releasing Contingency: Effectively managing contingency reserves and deciding when to release funds without jeopardizing the overall budget is difficult.‍

❌ Compliance: Ensuring accurate financial reporting and compliance with regulations is complex and time-consuming.‍

❌ Standardizing Budget Structures: Establishing a consistent budget structure across a portfolio is essential but challenging in large-scale projects.

Mastt Budget Solutions

Mastt offers a suite of budget management tools designed to address the key challenges faced by project managers, ensuring clarity and control over project finances:

💡 Simple Budget Table: View a straightforward table that includes budgets, commitments and forecasting on one page.‍

💡 Budget vs Actuals vs Forecast: Easily compare budget data against commitments, total costs to complete, and payments made to quickly identify variances.‍

💡 Easy Drill Down: Access sub-budgets quickly for detailed interrogation and faster decision-making, enabling deeper insights.

💡 Easy Budget Changes: Move money between budgets easily or make direct changes to adapt to project shifts and requirements.‍

💡 Auditing: Maintain a log of changes for compliance and record-keeping.‍

💡 Auto Reporting: Budgets automatically power reports like dashboards, project status reports, and monthly reports.