Feature Spotlight: Auto-Forecast

Managing the budget for a construction project does not need to be difficult! Many construction project managers have resigned themselves to working with complex, overly detailed Excel spreadsheets, or working with complex, hard-to-learn, and expensive construction budget software. budget4cast is designed to be simple, by focusing solely on project budget management. We don’t try to do everything, just making budget and cash flow management straightforward and easy. Plus, we offer our web-based app at a very reasonable price, starting as low as $49 per month.

One very important example of this blending of simplicity and power is budget4cast’s Auto-Forecast feature. One common problem that project managers face is having to explain “extra money” in their projects while they are still in the process of loading the various quotes and invoices. The typical solution is to manually create a lot of “placeholder” quotes, until they are finished building their budgets. For example, they may estimate that they’ll spend twenty thousand on initial permitting, but they are still looking for the best vendor to perform the tasks, and in the meantime, they have to manually create an entry for this amount, so that they do not show a large credit in Over/Under. Multiply this task by the large number of budget items in the project Schedule of Values, and this becomes a management task all of itself.

Enter budget4cast Auto-Forecast feature: With a simple click of your mouse, you force the Over/Under for each (or all) budget items to be exactly zero! As you add quotes or even initial invoices, budget4cast automatically balances the ledger to maintain a zero over/under. No need to manage a lot of manual placeholders. Once you are done building the budget for this item, you simply turn off Autoforecast, and then manage the Over/Undergoing forward.

Instead of spending time on busy work — managing/updating contingencies and placeholders, budget4cast does this automatically for you!

The Auto-Forecast feature is just one example of how budget4cast couples simple design with powerful features to make the job of a construction project manager easier and more efficient — all at a low monthly price. If you’d like to learn more, please schedule a demo or register for a free trial project.