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Often project managers struggle to pull project financials together as part of the project status update for leadership because that data is stored in a different system from the project data. Sensei IQ™ offers the ability to easily enter and maintain your project financials, either manually or through automation, then generate all-encompassing project status reports. You can capture your budget, plan your spending, and track your actuals to see variance. Let’s explore how we can do this with Sensei IQ™.
Entering your budget is easy and flexible. Sensei IQ™ comes with a standard set of financial categories which are customizable to align with your organization’s financial categories already in use.
Figure 1 – Entering a budget
There are several options available for entering your financials. You can spread your budget equally across a specified number of months, as seen below.
Figure 2 – Equal budget distribution
From there, you can adjust months and budget amounts as necessary. You can also enter budget amounts by specific dates if a different cadence is needed, such as quarterly. Finally, there is a feature that will allow you to duplicate the same amount to multiple months. All of these options are highlighted below.
Figure 3 – Multiple ways to enter financials
Related: Recorded Demo: Project & Portfolio Management in M365
Entering forecast and actuals is easy, too! Forecasts can be entered in the New Cost feature the same way budgets are entered, either by equally distributing an amount over a set number of months, by specific dates, or by using the duplicate line feature.
Figure 4 – Entering a forecast
You are in control of how detailed you want your financial tracking to be. It can be at a very high level such as CapEx and OpEx, or a more granular level. For instance, you can enter one budget category and track all forecasts and actuals to that one budget; or you can break your budget out across categories such as labor, hardware, software, etc. then match your forecast and actuals to those categories; or you can take it one level further by breaking out specific hardware items within the hardware category, as shown below.
Figure 5 – Maintaining actuals
Navigating the financials grid in Sensei IQ™ is easy and provides maximum flexibility to view exactly what you need. The financial grid and reporting will aggregate totals, and you will be able to drill down to the category details to see specifically where budget problems might be on the horizon or already occurring. Refer to the image below as we now break down all of the options and icons available to you in the grid view. You can search (1) or filter (2) for a specific category, and the grid will update to reflect only those associated dollar amounts. The financial grid display will always begin in the current month, but you can view the data by fiscal year, quarter, month, or fiscal period (3). The number of periods to view (4) ranges from 3 to 31. You can change the view from vertical to horizontal (5) based on your viewing preference. You can decide what financial types (6) to view in the grid to set your view to match your focus. You can expand or collapse (7) all categories and refresh the data. And finally, using the last icon in the ribbon, you can toggle between full screen mode and back (8).
Figure 6 – Financials grid in Sensei IQ™
If you are using Resource Management and Timesheets, you can set up the automation to update labor costs in the financials grid. And since all financial data is stored within your Microsoft 365 tenant, we can customize automation to upload financial data from external financial systems or build reports that pull together Sensei IQ™ data with external financial data. Power BI reports pull all of your project data, including financials, into one easily accessible status report with dynamic filtering to produce a report focused on what is important to your audience.
Figure 7 – Financial reporting
And if your organization groups projects by Programs, Portfolios, or both, the aggregated financials can be analyzed using the Portfolio Leadership Insights report.
Sensei IQ™ eliminates the hassle of juggling data from multiple systems, allowing project managers to provide comprehensive and accurate project status updates. By leveraging Sensei IQ™’s native functionalities and automation capabilities, organizations can enhance their financial oversight and ensure more effective project execution and reporting.
To learn more about how Sensei IQ™ enables you to manage your project financials, contact us at info@senseiprojectsolutions.com.
About Deirdre Rogusky, PMP, ITIL v3 Expert, Principal Consultant – Sensei Project Solutions™
Deirdre has worked in the Information Technology field for over 30 years with an emphasis on successful project, program, and portfolio delivery. She has been an application developer, a database architect, a business analyst, a systems analyst, a project manager, program manager, and portfolio manager. She has also led a team focused on the continuous improvement of the project process from ideation through execution including establishing standards to meet Sarbanes-Oxley, COBIT, and PII compliance. Deirdre focuses on helping organizations improve project success using continuous process improvement and simplification in alignment with best practices. She has implemented and provided training on several PPM tools over the years. She is an active member of PMI’s New Hampshire Chapter and has been a round table presenter.
