ProjectSoft PM makes it possible to make a global budget (Top Down) or a detailed budget (Bottom Up). Both a cost and revenue budget can be made for each project (component), in terms of personnel and material resources required, necessary equipment and other costs. A big advantage is that initially you can budget for function categories and standard equipment/facilities and the specific personnel and material resources only need to be included in the budget after approval. It is also possible to budget a project iteratively by making a new version of the budget and to make another budget based on other insights or changes in the project scope. Only one version of the budget is active at any given time. It is also possible to first make a global budget and later a detailed budget and then compare them with each other. This provides insight into how the final budget was determined, which changes have been made over time and if a change in scope has been implemented, which may have a knock-on effect when it comes to the required resources. It is also possible at this stage to gain insight into which employees may be available to work on the project, within each of the job categories.
ProjectSoft PM allows for two types of budgeting. The easiest way is to copy the detailed budget to the budget module, which ProjectSoft PM then automatically divides into the required partial budgets per project component throughout the project lead time. This gives an excellent picture of which budgets are available over the years, for each project component. It also takes inflation into account through its indexing functionality. This means that the required budget can increase throughout the project, while operations run according to schedule. The second and more laborious form of budgeting is to first distribute a budget top-down in the sub-projects/phases and then subdivide the underlying levels further. Here the budget levels per project (component) are used as the maximum limit for cost realization.