Cost loading and cash flow

Give each task a budgeted amount and Ganttry turns the schedule into a cash-flow forecast: it spreads each task's cost across the days it is worked and adds the results up month by month. The same numbers show what you have earned so far against what you planned.

Where to find it#

• The Cost column in the grid. It starts hidden: right-click any column header → Add or show columns… to show it.
• Tools ▾ → Cash flow… for the chart and the monthly table.

Entering costs#

The Cost column holds one budgeted lump sum per task. Type 12500 or $1,234.56 — commas and a dollar sign are fine.

Costs belong on the tasks that do the work, not on summaries: a summary row shows the total of the tasks under it, and you can't type into it.

The cash-flow chart#

Tools ▾ → Cash flow… spreads each task's cost evenly across its working days and charts three running totals as an S-curve, with a marker for today:

• Planned — cost spread over the tasks' current dates;
• Earned — cost times each task's % complete;
• Baseline — cost spread over the active baseline's dates, when the project has a baseline (see Baselines and variance).

Under the chart, a monthly table lists the planned, earned and baseline amounts with their running totals, and the budget and earned totals at the foot. The line above the chart gives the budget and what has been earned to date, as a percentage.

With no costs entered yet, the dialog says so and offers Show Cost column.

A task with a work pattern — work only on some days of the week — counts only the days actually worked. See The Gantt chart.

In reports and exports#

• Excel: once any task has a cost, the Excel export gains a second worksheet, Cash flow, with the monthly planned, earned and baseline amounts in currency format — whether or not the Cost column is shown. It always covers the whole project, even when you export a filtered view.
• PDF: the export dialog's options include Cash flow page, which appends the cash-flow page. It appears only when tasks have costs.
• Reports: the Cash Flow report on the Reports page opens the same dialog for any project — see Reports.
• Dashboard: a project's Dashboard shows the cash-flow S-curve when its tasks carry costs — see The project Dashboard.
• Imports: a CSV or Excel import can bring costs in — a Cost, Amount, Total or Budget column maps to Cost. See Importing a project.

Who can use it#

Admins and Editors enter costs and open the cash-flow chart. Field accounts never see costs: task costs are taken out of everything a Field account receives. See Who can see and do what.

Good to know#

• Costs don't go out in the MS Project XML export, and a re-import that updates a project in place never touches them — see Print and export and Importing a project.
• The spread is even: each working day of a task gets an equal share of its cost.