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Skills / Working / Manage a project budget

Working Money skill

Manage a project budget

Reconcile project budget, actuals, commitments, forecast, contingency, and approved changes.

Maintain one auditable view of approved funding and expected final cost. Separate cash timing from cost and commitments from invoices.

Procedure

  1. Confirm approved scope, budget baseline, currencies, accounting period, categories, tax treatment, contingency, and decision authority.
  2. Reconcile purchase orders, contracts, time, expenses, invoices, credits, payments, accruals, and committed future spend.
  3. Classify approved budget, actual cost, committed cost, estimate to complete, forecast at completion, cash paid, and variance.
  4. Record exchange rates, allocation rules, assumptions, missing entries, and data cutoff.
  5. Forecast remaining work by cost driver, schedule, risk, and scenario rather than applying a blanket percentage.
  6. Track contingency draws and management reserve separately with authorized reasons.
  7. Link scope or schedule changes to cost impact, approval, and baseline version.
  8. Review material variance, burn, vendor exposure, funding gap, and cash timing with owners.
  9. Close the period by reconciling to finance records and documenting unresolved differences.

Failure plan

  • Do not treat unspent budget as available when commitments or forecast consume it.
  • Never move costs, omit accruals, or change baselines to hide variance.
  • If financial systems disagree, preserve the reconciliation gap and use the authorized ledger as the accounting source.
  • Restrict payroll, vendor, banking, and commercial details appropriately.

Related skills

  • Manage a grant budget — Track restricted funding, eligible costs, match, changes, and evidence against an approved award.
  • Manage a tax filing calendar — Manage a tax filing and payment calendar with jurisdiction, entity, obligation, due date, dependency, ownership, and proof of completion.
  • Manage a debt covenant calendar — Manage debt covenant dates, definitions, calculations, submissions, headroom, amendments, and evidence across facilities.