Setting budget estimates at top level

[chrisjuno456]

I'm working on building some reports that will show our actuals vs. estimates. We budget by labor hours rather than dollars, but I don't think that part should matter. What I'm struggling with is this: we don't do estimates per project. We have clients that send a lot of projects our way and at the beginning of the year we establish a budget for the client with estimates on what each type of work will cost (by hours). We need to be able to setup a structure in Workfront, perhaps within a Program for each client that has the estimated hours defined for each project type. We have defined project types setup with a custom form that gets added to each project. (i.e. Account Stewardship, Brand/Campaign Planning, Brochures, Packaging, UX Design, Video, etc.) Basically I'm not sure how to setup the structure in Workfront to establish the budget areas at the top level (Program or Portfolio). I've created a custom form and attached it to a Program to test, but it's not shaking out the way I'd like. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. Chris Jackson CheckMark

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi Chris, I have an idea that you might be able to leverage. On our most recent "http://store.atappstore.com/workfront-merge-or-split/">Workfront Merge , we invented a technique that let us illustrate the total budgeted hours and compare them against the actual hours in an elegantly, visual fashion: In a similar fashion, you could create one or more "budget" projects for each client, breaking them out to as low a level of granularity as suits you (e.g. just one that you keep updating as I did above with the one purple project; or one "original budget" and additional "scope increase" budgets as needed; etc.), tagging them as such via a Project level custom form you might call Project Type (as either Budget or Actual) and then juxtaposing them as I have done above in a report (by client) that shows Budget and Actual Projects, grouping by Project Type (Purple vs Pink) and summing the hours as purple scope increases and pink actual work progresses. I see tons of possibilities to leverage this technique at various levels of the Portfolio > Program > Project > Task > Issue hierarchy. Have fun experimenting, and if you find A Winner, do share back! Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand! https://community.workfront.com/participate/unanswered-threads