Project Cost Report Template

Toolkits
Toolkits January 13, 2022

Project Cost Report Template

This project cost report template enables you to monitor and control the costings of your project. It has been designed so that the necessary and essential data is quickly visible to anyone receiving a copy of this report.

An essential area that any project manger must maintain a tight control on is that of the costs associated with the project. Many completed projects fail to meet their objective because the financial management and reporting was weak and the expected budget was vastly under funded for the actual spend.

There are three key phases essential to good financial management during any project. They are:

• Estimating Costs
• Defining the Budget
• Controlling Costs.

A key aspect of developing the project’s scope document will be the estimation of costs associated with each work package as defined in the work breakdown structure (WBS) document. From these cost estimates you will have produced you baseline cost, which forms the budget of your project.

A vital skill of any project manager is ensuring that the costs incurred during the project match that of the baseline used to arrive at and finalize a figure for the project budget. Part of the project communications plan will be defining exactly what financial information you require from various members of the project team so that you are kept aware of how actual costs match those budgeted. For many project mangers this may be a skill base that they need to develop so that they are familiar with financial terminology and budgeting tasks.

To help you understand what is involved in the monitoring and managing of the financial aspects of a project we have designed a free cost report template. Each WBS item is identified by its unique id and description as well as the project phase it is attached to. The columns to the right of this data give you the budgeted figure and then show what has actually been spent so far. Before showing the total spend for each WBS item you will show a forecasted

This report template will show you how to monitor and control the costs associated with your project. It has been presented so that the necessary and essential data is quickly visible to anyone receiving a copy of this report. It also allows for easy identification of areas where costs have risen beyond what was planned and expected reflecting in the status assigned to this WBS item. Finally you can provide an explanation for any variance in costs so that anyone receiving this report can have an appreciation as to why this has happened.