FREE Resource Budget Template

Posted by Kevin Brady on Tue 7th October 2008 at 04:57 PM, Filed in Document Templates & Tools

For your free template please click: - Clarety Resource Budget Template

This template contains data from an actual project, but with the project and people’s names altered for confidentiality reasons. I have left the content in the template to give you a better feel for how it was compiled and how it can be used.

For those of you who are users of Microsoft Project the attached spreadsheet might at first glance look like duplication of what can be achieved through customisation of Microsoft Project. Well to some extent you are right. Much of the content is a straight cut and past from Microsoft Projects Resource Usage view. However, the reason for extracting to excel is to have more control over the raw data, as of course excel can do things that Microsoft Project cannot.
One of the problems with Microsoft Project is that when planning and generating your resource usage view it can throw up a false view of the actual effort required to deliver a project. Microsoft Project always assumes that unallocated resources are outside of the project and therefore no longer a draw on the capital budget. This is all well and good when the gaps between project tasks are 2 + weeks and resources can be reallocated and brought back in time for the next planned task. However, this not a realistic option when the gaps are hours or just a day or two. It is often not realistic, or even possible, for that resource to be posted back into the resource pool for such short periods of time. Furthermore, people often don’t record via time recording minor down times when their bonuses etc are based on certain target % utilisation during the year.

To get round this issue, which can lead to a serious budget underestimation, I use the attached spreadsheet with an incorporated “Project Utilisation Threshold” field. The field stores a user entered percentage ranging from 0 to 100%. If the percentage entered in this field is less or equal to the percentage resource utilisation for each resource (Microsoft estimated resource divided by the resources expected duration on the project – expressed as a percentage) the budgeted resource allocation to the project is automatically increased to 100%. This lifts the budgeted costs and allocated effort to a more realistic level.
The template also takes the effort out of the estimation process by automatically working out the duration (in days) for each resource assigned to the project from any entered start and finish date.

If you decide to download this template and think it is great, then please enter a comment and tell the world. However, if you think it could be improved then please also comment so that Clarety can continue to provide the best project /programme management templates on the internet.

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