The Project Budget page is a quick and efficient way to begin building out new projects in Monograph. By using your Firm Services and Consultant fees as a foundation, this tool will help you create your projects and unlock the use of other features within Monograph. For new users who have not previously built a project, please refer to How to Create a Project guide as your first step.
🎬 Tip 1: Assign Default Roles!
Set default roles and rates for each of your team members for faster and more efficient team assignments on every project.
Default Roles allow Monograph to understand what a team member's standard role and rate are when creating projects and logging time. By assigning Default Roles when first setting up your account, you'll guarantee a smoother process once you begin building out projects.
Follow the instructions outlined here to set your Default Roles and better understand how this will impact your team logging time.
🏆 Best Practice: You're in control! We understand that sometimes a team member may play a different role within a project, or perhaps you'll offer a unique billable rate to a specific client. When creating a new project, you will have the opportunity to assign a different role and rate to any team member if necessary.
💰 Tip 2: Understand Your Fees!
Identify what fees will relate to your direct workload, as well as those outsourced to consultants.
When you create a project in Monograph you will need to provide basic information such as Project Name, Number, and Fee Type.
Along with this information, you will also provide detailed fees relating to this project. These fees will serve as the foundation for both allocating individual phase budgets, as well as applying your consultant fees to the project or phase level. You can learn more about adding consultants to your project here.
Service Fees: This figure should include the sum of all services provided during the Fixed Fee phases. This does not include Hourly phases.
Consultant Fee: This figure should include the sum of all consultant services for this project. You will have the opportunity to divide up this sum and assign to specific consultant types later on.
Total project budget will refer to the sum of your Architectural and Consultant fees added together.
🏆 Best Practice: Knowing your fees ahead of building out a project in Monograph will allow you to progress more efficiently, be sure to have your contracts or budget information handy prior!
🌒 Tip 3: Phases, Phases, Phases
Add phases and specific phase budgets to fully allocate your projects and enhance your forecasting power.
Phases are a critical component of a project that will allow Timesheets, Staffing, and Reports to work accurately. Allocating a budget to each phase will allow you to use the full power of forecasting in Monograph.
Allocating a phase budget may be done by either adding in a specific dollar amount or allocating a percentage amount of the overall from your Service Fee. Once you've allocated your budget, be sure to click the Save button to continue your progress and save your information.
🏆 Best Practice: Never leave a project without phases or phase budget. Even when a phase is Hourly, always include a Max Cap amount. If you do not include a phase budget or max cap for each phase, your project will not appear in your Staffing views or Reports and reflect incomplete information in Monograph.
👍 Tip 4: Staff It Up!
Assign your Team Members to define their specific roles within every phase of your project.
After adding phases with a phase budget, specify which team members will be working on this project.
Once you select the team member to assign to each phase, you will be prompted to choose their Role and Billable rate.
For example, in the image above we need to know that Hansel Janzer is working as the Project Designer at a billable rate of $100/hr to ensure that any future time logged towards this phase will be tracked and impact the Money Gantt and phase budget accordingly.
🏆 Best Practice: Follow Tip #1 and be sure to assign Default Roles to each of your team members when you first set up your Monograph account for faster and more efficient team assignments on every project phase.
⏰ Tip 5: Allocate Planned Hours!
Allocate planned hours for your team members on every phase to better forecast your planned workload.
When planned hours are assigned to individual team members within a phase, several features are unlocked within Monograph including Staffing and the Profit Report, Team Forecast Report, and Project Progress. This will also allow you to compare the planned hours for each team member vs. the actual hours they log towards each phase.
Without assigning planned hours, Monograph will not know the expectations for each team member to work on each phase. This means we cannot advise if someone is working too much or too little against your plan.
Allocating hours successfully also allows you to review projects at completion to understand how the team's planned estimates compared to hours worked to improve future proposals and profit margins.
Assigning hours to each team member may be done by either adding in a specific number of hours or by allocating a percentage amount of the phase budget based on their billable rate.
When assigning planned hours, you may use some of the methods below. These hours are an assumption of what you expect each team member to work, do not worry about entering concrete hours. You will have the opportunity to check and adjust your plan as you continue to use Monograph. Consider this your starting point!
Equal distribution - divide phase budget equally among the team
Role distribution - divide phase budget based on the effort a role has within a project. For example, Principal 10%, Project Manager 40%, Designer 50%
Past Project distribution - refer to a previous project that may be similar in scope or budget and assign based on prior workload completed.
🏆 Best Practice: Never leave hours unassigned, use your best professional estimate to assign a ballpark and then adjust as learn! This is a critical step in maximizing use of Monograph and accessing all features to the fullest.
🧩 Tip 6: Save As Templates!
Save your existing projects as new templates to reference for future projects.
Project templates are a vital tool that allows you to move quicker when building out new projects in Monograph.
You can create a new template at any time by checking out these detailed instructions, however, you can also save any existing project directly as a template! Explore more on Project Templates.
This comes in handy if you have similar projects based on scope, client, or budget. To save a project as a template, simply choose your project of choice from the Overview menu - this will lead you to the Specific Project Overview.
From here, click on the More button and select Save as Template.
🏆 Best Practice: When building out your first few projects in Monograph, remember to save your favorites as templates so you can save time and move faster when creating future projects!