Why is Jira Project Cost Tracking Important?

Project Cost Tracking with Epic Sum Up and Tempo (845 × 375 px)

In 2020, only 43% of organisations completed projects within a set budget. That shows how important it is to keep an eye on your project costs and expenses. Tracking project costs with Jira can help mitigate the risk of going over the budget. Thanks to its visual tools that have proven effective for collaboration, the whole project team can see the tracked costs via the progress bar. This allows them to share the responsibility for managing costs and gives each team member a level of accountability for their activities and their allocated budget.

Jira’s project cost tracking tools also help the project manager see which activities are costing more than expected. That helps them make the necessary changes, especially in human resources expenses, where it’s traditionally tricky to calculate the costs. It would also help plan for future similar projects, including implementing cost reduction strategies.

On the compliance side, if the costs are tracked with Jira, it’s easier to compile a report for the organisation’s accounting department that accurately reflects all the expenses. Accountants can then use this report to get income tax deductions from the tax authorities, allowing the organisation to earn cashback.

Risks for Businesses That Don’t Effectively Track Costs With Jira

Jira, together with Atlassian marketplace tools like Epic Sum Up and Tempo, provides technical and visual cost tracking solutions, allowing cost tracking for multiple projects at the same time. If the project manager is working on several projects simultaneously, not tracking costs can lead to significant financial problems for the organisation across several income streams. 

In addition, ineffective project cost tracking leads to the risk of not being able to predict the budgets of future projects of the sort accurately. That, in turn, can lead to inefficiency and overextending on costs and time, and misunderstandings across the organisation about the project department’s needs. 

Another danger of not tracking project costs with Jira is that without a clear, visual overview of expenses the software provides, the project team members aren’t aware of what other members are spending and whether they’re sticking to the budget. In the event of even one team member spending more than they’re allocated, the costs can go above project profit, affecting the EBIT and even making it negative. That gives the project and organisation’s stakeholders a poor impression of the project’s performance, which can adversely impact similar future projects and investment opportunities for the organisation.

How Epic Sum Up Helps Track Costs

The Epic Sum Up plugin offered on the Atlassian marketplace allows the project team to have a clear overview of the Jira tasks and subtasks. The tool allows PMs to get those insights for several tasks at the same time, without having to open each task individually every time. 

Epic Sum Up does that via progress bars as visual tools that allow the team to track the important metrics, such as project costs. Such progress bars act as mini-reports by offering live analyses of the current state of expenses, and can all be viewed simultaneously, thanks to the Summary Panel

Detail View Editor with overall cost progress

The PMs can choose from a list of options to customise the progress bars. They can be customised to reflect most numeric and time, and other values, depending on the project team’s priorities. For instance, for the costs progress bar, the PM can request to track the number of man-hours spent and the total price of such man-hours relative to the overall budget. They can also set up several progress bars to track multiple project costs – e.g. if one supplier invoices for several projects, Epic Sum Up can be customised to track and display those costs relative to the relevant project’s budget.

Summary Panel with Overall cost progress bar

How Epic Sum Up & Tempo Give PMs Super Powers

Epic Sum Up and Tempo plugins can be integrated and used together within Jira.

As an example use case, PMs can capitalise on both tools by using Epic Sum Up for tracking costs and Tempo for timesheets. They can get to the timesheets whilst inside Epic Sum Up in a single click on the Tempo logo. This allows them to view the timesheets for a specific project, or “epic”. For instance, if the man-hours are paid by the hour, the hours logged in Tempo can display how many hours are spent on specific project activity, and the Epic Sum progress bar would allow the PMs to view how much of the project budget this activity is taking up, down to the hour. These powerful reports can allow the organisation to save money and make informed decisions for future projects.

Detail View Editor with Export to Tempo

Such efficiency also means a reduction in overhead for projects and lean project management. By having costs and time recorded in real-time in one click, the two plugins remove the need for interim project reports. That way, the team’s workload is reduced, and the PMs can distribute resources more efficiently. Chances are that admin stuff is taking up a lot of their time, features such as bulk editing of Epic Sum Up progress bars and one-click Tempo timesheet access can reduce that time.

If you want to add more efficiency and mitigate the risks of not tracking project costs for your organisation, download Epic Sum Up and Tempo at the Atlassian Marketplace and give them a go!

Not a technical user? No problem. Our team at APTIS or your local solution partner will be able to provide you with the expertise you need to get set up.

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