From the course: Management: Top Tips

Monitoring cumulative cost

From the course: Management: Top Tips

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Monitoring cumulative cost

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- Step 10, monitoring the cost of your project. Now, the reason that we want to keep an eye on the cost as we go along is that we need to forecast whether the finished project is going to be overspent or not. So at any time, we need to have a view of whether we're overrunning or not. The tricky thing about this is that the figures on their own don't mean anything. You need to compare them with the progress you're making. So, we've got a couple of examples to show you here. In the first example, you're supposed to have spent 100 by now, and you've only spent 95. But have a look at the diagram. Are we okay or not? In the second example, we're supposed to have spent 100. We've spent 120. The Accountants are going to be going, ooh, you're overspent. But have a look at the diagram. Do you think we're okay or not? So, the moral of this is have a look at the cost of what you're supposed to have spent so far and what you've actually spent. And then, always look at your Gantt Chart in order to make sense of those numbers.

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