Costs to Schedule Allocation – Product Support Guide

What is cost to schedule allocation?

This is the process of creating a relationship between a project's budget and schedule therefore assigning value to each day of a project.

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Key terms

Planned Value or Planned Revenue	The amount of budget allocated to a day of future work.
Earned Value or Earned Revenue	The amount of budget allocated to a day of completed work.
S-Curve (see image below)	The projected path of costs over time for a given project or cohort. Usually follows the shape of an “s” because costs are low in the beginning and increase quickly as construction begins.

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Why did we do this?

Once costs have been allocated to the schedule, we are able to produce readouts on Earned Value Management (EVM) which is a budget and schedule management tool. The visualization of this (developed by our data team in Looker) is known as the s-curve (see image below).

It has the added benefit of being a forecasting tool that the Finance Team and Homebound Leadership Team can rely on for reliable revenue projections.

EVM will allow anyone at Homebound to answer these questions:

Is this project ahead or behind schedule?
When is this project likely to be completed?
Is this project currently over or under budget?
How much will this project be over or under budget when it is complete?
What are the schedule and budget trends, and what can we do to adjust?
What is the remaining work likely to cost?
How efficiently are Homebound’s resources being used?
How efficiently is the Project Team using their time?

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4 Steps to allocate schedule tasks to cost codes

Step 1:

Add specs and selections to a project. See the article Adding a Spec to Specs & Selections for more detail on this topic.

Step 2:

There are two screens from which allocation can be completed: the schedule screen and/or the specs & selections screen.

Schedule screen:

From the schedule screen, click the "i" icon to the right of any task. Within the pane that opens, click "add a Project Item" next to Cost Allocation to assign a cost code to this scheduled task.

Specs & selections screen:

Alternatively, users can allocate line items in the specs & selections screen directly from the table view (see image below). Allocation from this screen is only possible before a construction contract is finalized.

Note: Ensure that allocation is complete by reviewing the "Allocation" column in the Specs & Selections screen (see image below).

Step 3:

Adjust the status in schedules to reflect when tasks are completed in order to recognize earned construction value.

Step 4:

Reach out to Product Operations for assistance replicating allocations across like projects.

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Questions? Feedback? Email us at Product-Support@homebound.com or chat with us Blueprint!