Monthly vs. Yearly Expense Forecasts

This article describes the differences in behavior when the "Use Monthly Schedules" setting is enabled on a project and expenses are tracked on a monthly basis. 

  • The "Use Monthly Schedules" setting is defined on the Project Type or in the project settings of a specific project.
  • This setting allows expense forecasts to be applied to specific months rather than the entire year. 

Adding Expense Forecasts to Project Requests

When this setting is enabled, adding an expense forecast will have two steps.

  1. In Work Management, navigate to View Applications, and select the appropriate Portfolio Planning application.
  2. Click Project Requests in the left navigation and click the request name in the list.
  3. Click Expense Forecast in the left navigation.
  4. Select the Monthly Expense Forecasting option.
  5. Click + Add.
  6. In the Add Expense Forecast panel, fill in the required fields, including the Expense Date Range.
  7. Fill in any other details and click Generate. 

Once you click Generate, the page will distribute the Expense Amount across all months in the defined range, splitting it based on the number of organizational working days. You can optionally adjust the specific monthly forecasts. When complete, click save. 

Expense Forecasts in Windows Budget and Capacity Planner

After expense forecasts are configured for a project or request, they will be included in the Budget and Capacity Planner (BCP). They will behave differently depending on the "Use Monthly Schedules" setting. When expenses are defined monthly, BCP will use the exact expense forecast in the Budget grid. Shifting a project or request keeps the expenses in the same relative position to the project's other forecasts (i.e., role forecasts). 

If expense forecasts are tracked on an annual basis, you can still use the budget portion of BCP, but it will make some assumptions for you. Since each expense forecast applies only to a calendar year, it is automatically distributed across the entire year in the BCP report. Then, when you shift by a month at a time, the distributed expense forecast will shift accordingly. So a one-month shift will move an expense that went from January to December so that it now goes from February to the next January. 

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