7 Best Project Budget Software for 2024
Wrong estimates, project expenses going through the roof, or resources getting out of hand?
We get it; these are the most frequent issues we hear from PMs. But that’s not the case when you’re using the right tool stack.
So, we made an overview of the 7 best project budgeting software tools on the market to help you regain control.
The best project budget software apps
Image source: Timeular.
What is a project budgeting software?
A project budgeting software is, in essence, a project management software designed to streamline project budgeting. It allows project managers and teams to track project costs and efficiently allocate resources throughout the project cycle.
Needless to say, using project budgeting software is pivotal to ensuring that your projects are delivered within budget and on time. This will lead to an organization’s financial health and profitability.
If you’re curious about a project manager’s roles and responsibilities, dive into our article on this topic.
Why do you need project budget management software?
Starting a project without a solid budget and budget forecasts is like sailing without a compass. The reality is that one in six IT projects are not finished on time and have considerable cost overruns.
In one Harvard Business Review study made on 1,471 IT projects, the cost overrun was 27%, but that’s not even the real tail risk.
One in six of the projects from the sample was a Black Swan with an average of 200% budget overrun, and a schedule overrun of almost 70%.
A Black Swan is an extremely negative event or occurrence that is impossibly difficult to predict. In other words, black swan events are events that are unexpected and unknowable.
Corporatefinanceinstitute.com
However, the widely uncontrollable project budgeting can become more controllable with the right software tools, as that would bring:
- Higher data accuracy at higher speed: Project budgeting tools use advanced algorithms and data analysis at a higher speed than you’d be to process data, numbers, and calculations. Software tools can make predictions based on past projects with similar costs or scopes and can estimate with more precision. All these capabilities can significantly reduce the risk of budget overruns.
- Clarity on project parameters: By having a dashboard of project parameters and time spent on tasks, as well as budget expenditures, you eliminate data silos and obtain a cohesive and clear workflow.
- Anomalies detection: Project budgeting software helps in mitigating financial risks early and alerts you that you’ll run over budget or that you’ll spend more than you initially forecasted on a project.
- Friction-free workflow: A budget management software centralizes all project stakeholders within one platform: project managers, team leaders, finance teams, and others. With simple reports generated from the app for budget approvals, you obtain a cohesive workflow.
With the right software, what seemed widely uncontrollable turns into accurate predictions.
What to look for in project management budgeting tools
| Robust reporting | Choose a comprehensive time reporting system that allows you to generate automatic, customizable, and interactive reports seamlessly. The app gets bonus points if the reports look visually appealing. |
| User-friendly interface | Budget and resource allocation are complicated enough. Choose a tool that simplifies the process as much as possible and reduces errors that may arise with a simple and intuitive interface. |
| Automation and AI features | With AI on the rise, manual work is about to be ditched, so gain a competitive advantage by carefully picking tools with an automated workflow and even AI capabilities. |
| Integration capabilities | Choosing incompatible systems causes clashes, so check third-party integrations with existing systems. It might be worth checking compatibility with your project management app, HR stack, accounting, and others. |
| High data security | Project budget software should protect your data. Make sure you check their data security and privacy policy, whether the app stores data on the cloud or on the local computer, and whether they abide by GDPR regulations, too. |
| Available across-teams | All teams should be allowed to access and utilize the tool for prolific use. |
| Scalable | Ensure you’re choosing software that grows with your organization. Customization is important, too, as you might manage unique projects with different requirements. |
What are the best project budget software solutions?
Timeular
With budgets under scrutiny more than ever, as a PM, you need a friction-free project time-tracking app loaded with smart, one-click-away features that make a real difference in your work.
It’s easy to use, and offers you 360-degree visibility over project progress in real-time, so you can make key financial decisions.
“Since we started using Timeular and tracking our time, we’ve never made another mistake in planning, creating accurate proposals or budgeting for clients. It’s so easy to use.” – AC Coppens, Founder of THE CATALYSTS
Key features:
- Budget monitoring and recurring budget alerts are triggered automatically based on a simple pre-set ( AKA configure Timeular to notify you when reaching a threshold of 50% or 80% of the time allocated to a project;
- Automatic time tracking on projects to get an honest view of why and how estimated costs are impacted in real-time, proactively correct any risks, and eliminate the hassle of manual timesheets;
- Customizable time reporting system for a digestible breakdown of activities, tasks, or client projects to gain insights into managing different project components;
- Billable hours tracking is done with a click, then based on hourly rates and hours worked, calculated automatically and reflected in your project reports;
- Integrations with 3000+ tools such as Trello, Slack, Quickbooks, and Asana to seamlessly navigate between apps and mirror data wherever you need it.
Other facts that make Timeular a great project budgeting tool:
- It covers many ways of capturing time spent on projects, from automatic to AI-generated time entries to manual time-tracking;
- It’s the only project budgeting software with a physical time tracker, a gadget that, once flipped to another side, captures a different task or activity. It’s loved by teams and managers alike and drives team efficiency due to its high use.
- It works both as a leave tracker and overtime tracking app, which comes as a great help in task assignment and resource allocation.
- It includes an AI productivity tracker reflected in an individual dashboard, including apps that sidetrack work efficiency or times you are at peak productivity.
Pricing:
30-day free trial
Starts at $7.50 per user/month
“Timeular is simple and really easy to use, so the teams took to it very quickly. It makes it really easy for us to see where we can optimize our time and processes.” – Nadiya Eichberg, Head of Battery Testing at Kiwa
Zoho Projects
Project managers wear many hats in their roles and have varied responsibilities. So, they need a project management tool that meets their needs and high expectations. Zoho Projects is one of these tools.
Zoho Projects includes features like managing project budgets, expense management, budget forecasting, and others. As it is an online project management tool, it enhances team collaboration and increases team collaboration on complex projects.
Key features:
- Versatile project budget tracking, including the amount allocated, hours spent on projects, milestones, or project tasks;
- Budget threshold alerts are sent when the budget exceeds a threshold amount;
- Budget forecast status with tags like ‘At Risk,’ ‘Overrun,’ or ‘Surplus’;
- Client billing and time tracking features, too.
Limitations:
- It doesn’t have a mobile app;
- Users cannot create tasks or assign them to other coworkers, which makes task management cumbersome.
Pricing:
- Free: $0 for three users for up to two projects
- Premium: $4 for unlimited projects, up to 50 users
Adobe Workfront
Adobe’s Suite wouldn’t be complete without project management software in its stack. It’s a feasible budgeting app for any business role, from marketing, IT, and PMO to services. Besides project budget management, Workfront covers project planning and task management and streamlines asset creation and delivery.
Key features:
- Forecasted, planned versus actual project costs view in a dashboard to help control budget as the project emerges;
- Real-time resource management, allowing you to cut down on resource conflict by re-allocating;
- Managers and C-suite can approve a project or “what if” scenarios directly in the platform;
- Integration with Adobe Experience Manager, which helps you connect almost all your functions with one another.
Limitations:
- It can be costly for small businesses to use Adobe’s products, and for each of Adobe’s products, you’ll need another subscription;
- Adobe’s products have a steep learning curve in general, and Workfront is no exception.
Pricing:
- Custom pricing
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- A project monitoring guide
Smartsheet
Smartsheet is a versatile and user-centric solution that emphasizes collaboration and planning. This platform makes it easy for anyone in the organization’s hierarchy to align on projects as they have access to the same view. Without over-engineering the platform, but with a simple interface, Smartsheet succeeded in gathering all stakeholders in the same repository.
Key features:
- Automated approvals on new items or budget changes;
- Documents such as vendor bids centralized in one location;
- A single view with real-time dashboards on financial metrics;
- Real-time cost tracking, cost breakdown graphs, and chart visualization features.
Limitations:
- No automatic time tracking;
- No option to visualize task levels;
Pricing:
- Free: $0 per user per month
- Pro: $7 per user/ per month
- Business: $25 per user/ per month
- Enterprise: Custom Pricing
RodeoDrive
RodeoDrive is an all-in-one project management tool that can be a project manager’s best assistant from the inception of a project until its completion. This cloud-based software lets you track projects, generate reports, and streamline invoicing and project budgeting.
Key features:
- Comparison between real-time actual budgets against forecasted to avoid overspending and profit loss;
- Billable hours tracking and set markups for improving project margins;
- Projects can be split into phases and invoiced separately based on actuals, retainers, or completion percentages for accurate expense management.
Limitations:
- Some users mention they would need integrations with more apps, such as accounting
- No free trial is available
Pricing:
- Free: $0 for one user per month
- Achiever: $14.99 per user/ per month
Monday.com
Monday.com is shaking up project management by combining visual tracking and flexible workflows in a dynamic space for teams. Its design makes it look like a visual canvas in which teams manage their projects. Though Monday.com is primarily a project management tool, it covers a project budgeting feature, too.
Key features:
- Estimated versus actual costs monitoring;
- Automatic calculation based on formulas that let you know if you’re “over,” “within,” and “under” budget;
- Roll-on budget visibility to know how much budget you’ve got left;
- Dynamic snapshots of Kanban boards, timelines, and charts to easily keep your team in the loop;
- Chat function, updates sharing, and task setting are available.
Limitations:
- Pricing is relatively high for smaller organizations;
- Former users report that Monday’s mobile app lacks flexibility.
Pricing:
Free: $0 per user/month
Basic: $8 per user/month
Standard: $10 per user/month
Pro: $16 per user/month
Enterprise: Custom pricing
Wrike
Wrike’s project management software is a great choice for creating a budget plan and estimating, as well as tracking financials in real-time.
One of Wrike’s best features is budget variance management. The variance process happens when project costs are different from the predefined or planned ones and aids project managers pinpoint the sources of the fluctuations.
Key features:
- Preferred currency set-up within the account;
- Default hourly rates for users, including custom hourly rates for projects;
- A set of fields helping with planning and tracking the financial progress of projects;
- Automatic calculation of planned fees and costs versus actual costs and fees;
- Automatic resource distribution to meet budgeting needs;
- Integrations with more than 400 tools, like Hubspot, Salesforce, and Slack.
Limitations:
- It doesn’t allow sending or receiving emails from the app;
- Prices might be too high for smaller organizations.
Pricing:
- Free: $0 per user per month
- Team: $9.80 per user per month
- Business: $24.80 per user per month
- Enterprise: custom pricing
- Pinnacle: custom pricing
Implementation and best practices
Define project goals and budgeting processes:
Clearly outline the objectives you aim to achieve with the software, ensuring alignment with your organizational strategy. Establishing a solid foundation sets the stage for effective implementation.
Train team members effectively:
Organize comprehensive training sessions to ensure that your team members quickly grasp and understand how to best use the project budget management software.
Tip: Timeular organizes a kick-off training held by the internal team of specialists in which we share tips and tricks about how to best use the software.
Regularly review and update budgeting strategies
A fixed-down budgeting process is like a static object, ineffective and unresponsive to changing circumstances. However, the market changes often, inflation increases or decreases, prices change, and there are many other moving parts of a project that are interconnected and require adjustments.
Constantly monitor and customize your project budget software
Constantly monitoring if there are any shortcomings in terms of integrations or customization for the platform to meet your needs and your teams’ needs. You might stumble upon challenges or may perform a multi-step process as you’re lacking an automation or integration that could be made easily.
Encourage collaborative practices
Cultivate collaborative practices within your project teams to create tasks together, fostering open communication and shared insights.
With the right software, what seemed widely uncontrollable turns into accurate predictions.
Conclusion
In conclusion, project budget software, such as Timeular, is essential for any project manager to effectively manage project costs, offering a range of benefits, features and solutions.
By carefully considering the factors outlined in this guide, organizations can choose the right project budget software to improve accuracy, streamline processes, and ultimately achieve successful project delivery.
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FAQs
Which is the best project budget software?
Determining the best online project project budget management software andtool for project budgets depends on your specific needs, and among the top contenders, Timeular stands out for its robust budgeting features and great project management capabilities that cater to effective task management.
How can project budget software benefit my organization?
Project budget software is a game changer, helping to manage costs, refine the accuracy of estimates, and strengthen overall financial control for more successful projects. Its reporting and analysis features contribute to excellent financial reporting.
Is project budget software suitable for small businesses?
Absolutely. Many project budget software options are designed to meet the needs of small businesses, providing scalable solutions and facilitating efficient workload management.
What are the key features to look for in project budget software?
Key features include budget planning, expense tracking, resource management and seamless integration with other project management tools for effective task collaboration.
How does project budget software integrate with other project management software?
Project budget software often integrates seamlessly with other project management software through APIs, ensuring a cohesive workflow and data consistency.
How much does project budget software cost?
Costs vary depending on the software and features. It’s important to check pricing plans and choose one that fits your budget and needs.
What are the risks of not using project budget software?
Risks include inaccurate budget estimates, overspending, lack of financial control, cost overruns, and difficulty in effectively tracking project spending.