Hi: Do other organisations track project budgets fully in Workfront? We track the project baseline in WorkFront – which to us means the last approved project plan. Any time we get an approved change to a project, we snap a new baseline; We track the current forecast in WorkFront – that's the task plan; We track everything else outside of WorkFront, in Excel, actually; What capabilities are there for programme budget tracking? None that we can tell. What we do to get around that is create a program-forecast project plan in the program and use it to hold budgetary estimates. When we start a project, we decrement this program-forecast project plan, so the overall rolled-up cost of the program remains the same. That program-forecast project plan is a bucket of money, essentially. We take money out of the bucket so the net cost of all elements of the program remain constant. We have a number of reports that roll up the sum total of the various types of money in all of the projects within the program. How do other organisations track actual spend vs budgets in Workfront? Because of the way our financial organization tracks project cost in the financial system, there is an ambiguity that prevents us from knowing, in the finance system, whether a particular cost is associated with one project or another. They have us used generic activity codes on multiple projects, but the finance system only knows the generic activity code, not the project that generated that expense. We can't go backwards from the accounting system back to WorKFront; We use WorkFront as the system of record for hours, not dollars; How do organisations produce accurate forecasts in Workfront. Let's take that in two parts: How do we produce forecasts? How do we know they are accurate? How do we produce forecasts? A forecast, to us, is the combination of the labor cost and material expenses; We create a forecasted project during planning at the end of the year, and that project holds the high level estimates for labor and material cost; That allows us to roll up the aggregated forecasts of all projects within a portfolio, and that forecast aligns with our approved budget for a given year; When, in the following year, we are ready to start a project, we create the task plan for the project in the forecasted project plan and delete the forecast line items (tasks) from the project; In this way, we can always roll up a portfolio to see what the forecasted cost will be, and compare it to the rolled up Baseline cost to see the variance; How do we know it is accurate? We guess, like everyone else. We don't use a rigid forecasting methodology, like Function Point Analysis; We have templates we use that rather much guide people down a common path to creating a task plan, but in the end, we are using calibrated eyeball forecasted; Can manual variances be used? Not sure what a manual variance is. We compare the baseline (last approved) to the current forecast; That tells us the variance we are most interested in – the difference between the amount of money/hours approved and the amount currently forecast; What common financial reports and dashboards do your Project Managers and Programme Managers use? Commonly used reports are: Comparison of baseline to current forecast (this is actually complicated because we have difference kinds of money – OpEx and CapEx); Rolled up labor forecast by Portfolio, by program, and by project (three separate reports) – This is complicated because of the different kinds of money; Rolled up material forecast by Portfolio, by program, and by project (three separate reports); Actual Variance report – This shows us where we have spent more money than authorized; Planned Variance report – This shows us where we plan on spending more money than authorized; Are there any custom fields required to set this up? Yes, we have a custom attribute to tell us whether the task models Operating Expense work, or models capitalizable work. We do not co-mingle opex and capex work on a single task; How is budget vs spend (on both expenses and resources) pulled together to give a nicely formatted top level view for Project Managers, Programme Managers, Sponsors, Senior Management etc. We do that in Excel, because we haven't figured out how to get two distinctly different objects in the same report. I can't get task labor and material expense details on the same report; We have a dashboard, but still shows material and labor separately; We do have reports that show the sum total of labor and material, but there is no way in that report to show OpEx labor and CapEx labor, because it used the built-in sum total fields; What challenges have other organisation had to overcome in order to successfully implement budget tracking via Workfront? Our project costing paradigm creates an ambiguity that keeps us from bringing actuals from the accounting system back into WorkFront; WorkFront does not support time-based cost per hour/rates. That means if I have an employee who gets a promotion and their rate increases on 01JAN2018, there is no way to show that their cost/hour was rate A in 2017, but is now rate B in 2018. This is the key reason why we don't use WorkFront as the system of record for project cost. It doesn't impact our ability to model forecast or budget, but it definitely keeps us from having usable Actual numbers; How was the adoption experience across users? Poor Is this an improvement on the budget tracking method that your organisation used previously? Previously, they used Excel and extracts from the financial system. Many vocal opponents of WorkFront say using Excel was way better, much easier. Only those with experience in project costing, or in project management in general, understand that without WorkFront, our data has no credibility; ------Original Message------ We're currently looking at trying to drive more of our project finances through Workfront and step away from separate Excel based budget tracking sheets. The benefits of making this step are quite obvious to us. e.g. Easier to access and share data, project finance information held in one system, useful reports & dashboards, visibility to senior management etc.
 
At the moment finance tracking in Workfront seems like a bit of a minefield to us. We started to test this during last year but ended up with more questions than answers. We'd really like to learn from other organisations that have gone through this process and find out if we've missed a trick. The transition currently feels quite daunting and fiddly to manage so any help, tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
We have many, many question about this topic. Below are some examples:
 
Do other organisations track project budgets fully in Workfront?
What capabilities are there for programme budget tracking?
How do other organisations track actual spend vs budgets in Workfront?
How do organisations produce accurate forecasts in Workfront.
Can manual variances be used?
What common financial reports and dashboards do your Project Managers and Programme Managers use?
Are there any custom fields required to set this up?
How is budget vs spend (on both expenses and resources) pulled together to give a nicely formatted top level view for Project Managers, Programme Managers, Sponsors, Senior Management etc.
What challenges have other organisation had to overcome in order to successfully implement budget tracking via Workfront?
How was the adoption experience across users? 
Is this an improvement on the budget tracking method that your organisation used previously?
 
Thanks for reading this query and for any information in advance.
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Dagmara Garwell
BAKKAVOR LTD
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