Project Forecast

Record project actuals and budgets to keep your financial forecast up-to-date

The project forecast tool is a powerful feature for recording your projects’ actuals and budgets to keep the financial forecast up-to-date.

Get Started

To access the forecast, you will first need to enter the project’s Construction Dates and Contract Value.

Once the project has Start & End Dates and a Contract Value entered, navigate to the project Forecast tab.

Here, you will see that the project forecast defaults to an S-curve - smaller payments in the beginning and end of a project, larger payments toward the middle of the project. You will also notice the columns broken out by revenue, profit, cost, and more. To better understand each of these columns, simply hover over the column header to view the information.

Edit Forecast

You can adjust the monthly forecast to more accurately reflect the distribution of revenue across the project’s duration.

To edit the forecast, click Edit Forecast at the top of the page.

Quick Forecast Options

Next, you can adjust your monthly completion percentages manually, or select Quick Forecast Options. The Quick Forecast Options enable you to select the forecast type that most accurately represents the distribution of revenue across the project’s duration. The forecast options include the following:

• Linear: Distribute revenue evenly across the project’s duration.
• Balanced Curve: Distribute revenue along a standard s-curve with most of the project’s revenue coming in during the middle of the project.
• Front Loaded Curve: Distribute revenue along a standard s-curve with most of the project’s revenue coming in during the first half of the project.
• Back Loaded Curve: Distribute revenue along a standard s-curve with most of the project’s revenue coming in during the second half of the project.
• Reset to current forecast: Undo any changes made and reset to the current forecast values.

Edit Forecast Manually

Alternatively, you can adjust the monthly completion percentages manually by entering the values into the fields below.

When updating completion percentages, each period’s percentage must be greater than the previous period’s percentage.

When your edits are complete, click Save Forecast , and the forecast chart will update accordingly.

Close Billing Periods

Once the project is awarded with a prime contract, you can begin to close monthly billing periods in the Forecast tool. Closing a billing period will allow you to record the exact progress a project has made during that billing period. When a billing period is closed, Buildr will automatically reforecast future billing periods, maintaining the forecast curve.

You will need to create a Prime Contract in order to close billing periods.

To enter actuals for a given billing period, navigate to the billing month and select Close Month.

Next, enter the period’s Cost, Estimated Cost at Completion, and Billed Amount. The Cost and Estimated Cost at Completion will be used to calculate the project’s completion percentage (see Cost-to-Cost formula notated under Project Costs).

Once your actuals have been entered, click Create. Buildr will automatically reforecast the project’s revenue based on the Cost entered.

As you proceed to close billing periods, Buildr will display the Initial Forecast curve indicated by the grey dotted line (see below). This enables you to compare the initial forecast with the project’s actuals.

The Initial Forecast curve is based on the project’s original construction dates and forecast periods. To preserve the Initial Forecast curve, project construction dates and forecast periods cannot be modified once a billing period is closed. This ensures that the Initial Forecast remains an accurate point of comparison against your project’s actuals.

Import Closed Periods

Buildr also enables you to import closed periods into your won projects. You can utilize the Forecast importer to bulk edit existing closed periods, or log new closed periods in your projects. Learn how to import closed periods here.

Edit a Closed Month

If you need to edit a closed month, simply click Edit.

Adjust your values, and click Update to save your changes.

Project costs in the middle of the forecast cannot be edited manually as they can affect subsequent closed periods. To bulk edit all closed periods at once, please import them.

Delete a Closed Month

Buildr enables you to delete the most recently closed billing period. Any closed months prior to the most recently closed billing period can be edited, but not deleted.

To remove the closed billing period, click Edit. Next, click Delete.

Forecast Trailing Periods

If there are costs or billings that occur after the construction has ended, you can extend the forecast beyond the construction end date.

To extend the forecast, click on the Settings icon in the project’s Forecast tab, enter the number of trailing periods, and click Save.