Track costs
You can track costs for projects, tasks, and issues in Adobe Workfront.
How Workfront calculates costs
To track costs, you must associate users and job roles with hourly cost rates.
Hourly cost rates are amounts of costs per work unit associated with job roles or users. Multiplying the rates by the hours spent on work generates costs for your projects, tasks, or issues.
The following scenarios exist:
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If the Cost Type of your tasks is User Hourly, the user hourly rate calculates the task and project costs.
For information about associating users with cost rates, see Edit a user’s profile.
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If the Cost Type of your tasks is Role Hourly, the job role hourly rate calculates the task and project costs.
For information about associating job roles with cost rates, see Create and manage job roles.
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Workfront calculates only Actual Cost for issues, and issues do not have a Cost Type. For more information, see the section How Workfront tracks costs for issues in this article.
Workfront cost performance indexes
Workfront calculates a number of cost performance indexes for projects so projects can be tracked for cost efficiency.
For more information about calculating cost-performance indexes, see:
How Workfront tracks costs for tasks and projects
The types of costs are calculated differently for tasks and for projects.
How Workfront tracks costs how-workfront-tracks-costs
You can track several types of costs for tasks and projects in Workfront. Overall costs are calculated by the following formula:
Costs = Labor Costs + Expense Costs
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Labor Costs are associated with the hours on tasks and projects and the Cost per Hour rates of the resources associated with tasks. Generally, Workfront calculates the following labor costs:
table 0-row-2 1-row-2 2-row-2 layout-auto html-authored no-header Planned Labor Costs They are calculated using the following formula:
Planned Labor Costs = Planned Hours * Cost per Hour rate
Budgeted Labor Costs They are calculated using the following formula:
Budgeted Labor Costs = Budgeted Hours * Cost per Hour rate
Actual Labor Costs They are calculated using the following formula:
Actual Labor Costs = Actual Hours * Cost per Hour rate
For more information, see the How Workfront calculates Planned, Budgeted, and Actual Costs section in this article.
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Expense Costs are associated with expenses on projects and tasks.
When you create a project, you can set planned expenses for the entire project. Additionally, you can associate expenses with new or existing tasks. For information, see Manage project expenses. -
Fixed Costs are defined as a fixed amount of cost for a project. This is part of the Planned Cost of the project, which represents the amount of money that you need to complete the project.
note tip TIP When attaching a template to a project, the Fixed Cost of a template is added to the Fixed Cost of the project. For information, see Overview of attaching a template to a project.
How Workfront calculates Planned, Budgeted, and Actual Costs how-workfront-calculates-planned-budgeted-and-actual-costs
Workfront calculates the Planned Cost and the Actual Cost for each individual task in a project. Workfront uses these calculations for individual tasks to calculate the Planned Cost and the Actual Cost for the project.
Planned Cost planned-cost
The Planned Cost of a project is the cost associated with the planned work (Planned Hours) on the project.
The Planned Cost of a project is calculated by the following formula:
Planned Project Cost = Planned Labor Cost of all tasks + Planned Expense cost of all tasks + Planned Expense Cost of the project + Fixed Cost of the project
For example, you have the following expenses on the Expenses tab of a task: a $100 Marketing expense and a $50 Administrative expense. In the Finance tab, you select the User Hourly cost type. A user is assigned to the task, and the user’s hourly rate is $15. The user is assigned to work 5 hours on this task. In the Expenses tab of the project, you have a $100 Planned Cost for an expense called Consulting. You also have a $200 Fixed Cost for the project.
The Planned Cost of the project is calculated as follows:
$100 (Consulting Expense) + $100 (Marketing Expense) + $50 (Administrative Expense) + $15(Hourly Rate)*5(Planned Hours Logged) + $200 (Fixed Cost) = $525
The hourly rate in the formula considers any date effective changes of the rate.
Budgeted Cost budgeted-cost
The Budgeted Cost of a project is the cost associated with the budgeted work (Budgeted Hours) on the project.
The Budgeted Cost of the project is the same as the Planned Cost of the project if the following two conditions are met:
- The Planned Hours of the tasks on the project match the Budgeted Hours (in the Resource Planner).
- The Billing Type of the tasks is Role Hourly.
The Budgeted Cost of the project is calculated using the formula below if the following conditions are met:
- The Planned Hours of the tasks on the project do not match the Budgeted Hours (in the Resource Planner).
- The Billing Type of the tasks is Role Hourly.
When the above conditions are met, Workfront calculates the Budgeted Cost of the project using the following formula:
Budgeted Project Cost = Budgeted Labor Cost + Budgeted Expense Cost of all tasks + Budgeted Expense Cost of the project
Actual Cost actual-cost
The Actual Cost of a project is the cost associated with the actual work (Hours logged) on the project.
Actual Cost is calculated using the following formula:
Actual Project Cost = Actual Labor Cost of all tasks + Actual Expense Cost of all tasks + Actual Labor Cost of the project + Actual Expense Cost of the project + Fixed Cost of the project
For example, you have the following expenses on the Expenses tab of a task: a Marketing expense with an Actual Cost of $110, and an Administrative expense with an Actual Cost of $40. You select the Role Hourly cost type and assign the Consultant job role to the task. The consultant job role’s rate is $15 per hour, and there are 6 hours logged on the task for the Consultant job role. There is a Consulting expense associated with the project (in the Expenses tab), with an Actual Cost of $100 and a user with a Cost per Hour rate of $20 in their user profile logs 10 hours on the project. You also have a $200 Fixed Cost for the project.
The Actual Cost of the project is calculated as follows:
$100 (Consulting Expense) + $110 (Marketing Expense) + $40 (Administrative Expense) +$15 (Hourly Rate)*6 (Actual Hours Logged) + $20 (Cost per Hour rate for the user logging time on the project)*10 (hours the user logs on the project) + $200 (Fixed Cost) = $740
The hourly rate in the formula considers any date effective changes of the rate.
SUM (All Project Actual Expense Costs) + SUM (All Tasks Actual Expense Costs) + Project Fixed Cost
- By default, Workfront uses the Cost per Hour rate of the user to calculate Actual Labor Cost.
- If the user logging the time is not associated with any cost, then Workfront uses the Cost per Hour rate of the user’s Primary Role.
- If your Workfront administrator enabled the Assign Job Roles to hour entries manually setting in the Timesheets & Hours Preferences area of Setup, and the user logging time on the project selects a different role to associate with this time, the Actual Cost of the project calculates based on the role specified when the hours were logged. For information about enabling logging time for a specific job role, see the article Configure timesheet and hour preferences.
How Workfront calculates Cost Types for tasks how-workfront-calculates-cost-types-for-tasks
The Planned and Actual Cost of the tasks and their Labor Costs are determined by the Cost Type of each task.
You can configure the Cost Type for individual tasks within the project. Each cost type affects the Planned Cost and Actual Cost values.
For information about how to modify the Cost Type of a task, see Update task Cost Type.
The following table describes the available task Cost Types in Workfront:
How Workfront tracks costs for issues how-workfront-tracks-costs-for-issues
Issues do not have and do not affect the following types of costs on a project:
- Planned Cost
- Budgeted Cost
Issues, can, however, have an Actual Cost, which also affects the Actual Cost of the project.
The following table explains how Actual Cost is calculated for issues, depending on the type of assignment on the issue: