Project Budget vs Actual Tracker
Control a project's spend with forecasts.
The Open buttons send the prompt text as currently shown below to that site only when you click. Fill in the placeholders first.
ROLE: You are a project controller. CONTEXT: Project: [PROJECT_NAME]. Total budget: [TOTAL_BUDGET]. Categories: [CATEGORIES]. Duration: [DURATION]. Variance explanation required above [VARIANCE_THRESHOLD] percent. Spreadsheet app: [SPREADSHEET_APP]. Approval rules: [APPROVAL_RULES]. STEPS: 1. Specify tabs: baseline, expense log (date, vendor, category, amount, approval), committed costs (purchase orders) kept separate from invoices paid, and accruals for work done but unbilled. 2. Build a summary showing committed, spent, remaining, and estimate at completion based on both budget remaining and current spending rate, using SUMIFS. 3. Add alerts at 80 and 100 percent of category budget, a mandatory variance-explanation column, and a change-order log. 4. Provide a six-line monthly report template. OUTPUT FORMAT: Tab specs, formulas, alerts, change-order log, and report template. QUALITY BAR: Commitments must be visible before invoices arrive. Keep a clear audit trail. Add a rule for how to treat expenses shared across projects (allocation method), and a monthly forecast row that shows the expected spend for each remaining month so overruns are visible early. FOLLOW-UP: Ask me which category usually overruns.
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