Features Below Available To: ✅ Grow Plan ❌ Track Plan ❌ Free Plan
With the budget draft calculator, Monograph now supports the direct creation of future budgets with more realistic budgets for your team and more predictable costs for your clients.
Monograph's project budget calculator helps you accomplish this objective by leveraging past projects and time logged in a 3-step process: defining basic project parameters, identifying a reference data set, and reviewing the calculated outputs.
Note: The project budget calculator is only intended to be used in cases where you are unsure of the specific service fees to bill to your client. If you have an agreed upon fee structure, you can go directly to one of the existing project creation processes.
Step 1: Define Project Details
To get started with the project budget calculator, when creating a new project, select the Build a Project Budget option and click Next.
Monograph needs to know basic information about the project to more accurately guide the definition of the project. After all of the following information has been added, click Next.
Project Name - name of the project
Number (Optional) - project number (not required)
Color - color to associate with the project
Client - client name associated with the project
Categories - category type(s) applicable to the project
Fee min - the minimum agreed-upon fee associated with the project
Fee max - the minimum agreed-upon fee associated with the project
Step 2: Identify Reference Data
Monograph will then calculate the new budget using actual time logged from completed projects. You’ll be asked to choose the best completed projects to use as reference for a starting point to build your budget.
There are three types of reference data you can use. After selecting the applicable option, click Create.
Template: Use a blended of average of time logged from completed project phases based on a specific template that has similar characteristics as the project you're creating.
If historical data does not exist for this template, you will not receive any recommendations and only see the default template view
Specific Project: Use time logged from a completed project with similar characteristics
Any completed project with similar category(s) and an overall fee budget within the optional budget range will be suggested
Create Your Own: Manually input a project plan (phases, timelines, roles and rates) in order to estimated the time needed for each role per phase. Monograph will then calculate a "bottoms up" budget for the overall project.
There will be no recommendations made in this case. You will need to manually calculate hours on past projects using the Time Log if you wish to base future budgets on past work with this option.
⚠️ For this feature, Monograph defines completed projects and phases as:
Projects and/or phases marked with the status of
Completed, orProjects and/or phases in
Activestatus whose date ranges have elapsed and have not had any time logged to them for at least 90 days.
Step 3: Review and Edit Budget Recommendations
After selecting the reference data, Monograph will generate an initial recommendation for you to review. These recommendations are based on the actual time logged.
If there is a difference between the actuals and the baseline budget for the original project or template, that will be called out as a change. Please note that the difference between the initial budgets and the actuals of time logged may result in the calculated budget exceeding the range estimation provided earlier.
The budget draft will include:
Fixed fees for fixed fee phases and consultant fees
Estimated hourly costs, whether capped or not
Editing Budget Recommendations
To make changes to the draft, you first need to Dismiss or Accept the recommendation for each applicable phase.
Dismissing will decline the recommendation(s), which will revert the roles and their hours to whatever was set originally used in the reference data set's budget.
Accepting will apply the recommendation(s) to the phase(s).
After the recommendations have been dismissed or accepted, if any further modifications need to be made, they can be manually adjusted as needed.
Completing the Project Budget Draft
When ready, you can set the budget draft to be in an active or proposed project. Click Start Project to set the project live with an Active status or Move to Proposed to set in a proposed status.
If you no longer want this budget draft, you can either delete it directly or mark the project cancelled after setting the project to proposed or active.
Calculations for Budget Recommendations
Monograph will recommend budgets that ensures you will achieve the desired profit margin in your hourly rates by setting future budgets to the past hours worked in reference project data.
Template: Monograph will generate a project from your template and then recommend a budget based on the actual roles and their time logged on completed phases from past projects that used this template.
Specific project: Monograph will start with a duplicate of the actual project and then recommend a budget based on the roles' time logged to provide a more accurate budget.
Hourly phases will include a calculated max cap based on the time logged plus a 10% buffer, if they had a budget set earlier in the reference data set. If the hourly phases do not have a budget set, Monograph will estimate what fees might look like for your client by totaling the time logged on those phases in your reference data set.