Forecasting in construction is crucial for efficient resource allocation, scheduling, and cost estimation, enabling better project management and timely completion while minimizing expenses and risks. It helps in aligning expectations, evaluating performance, and mitigating uncertainties for successful project delivery.

This article will show you how to utilize Forecasting for your project and budget.

Forecast Permissions

In order to utilize Forecasting, a user must first have access to the Forecasting tool. To grant a user access to the Forecasting tool, navigate to the ‘Security Roles’ within the ‘Organization’ menu. Select a Role Name to update that role’s privileges. In this example we’ll update the ‘Project Manager’ role.

Click the green pencil icon to open the Project Manager role.

Open the privileges listing.

Navigate to the ‘Job Cost’ section of privileges. Within ‘Forecasting Access’ there are three privilege options:

• None – The user won’t be able to access the Forecasting tool
• View Only – The user will only be able to view a Forecast that is created within the Forecasting tool
• Full Access – The user will be able to create, view and edit a Forecast within the Forecasting tool

 

Select ‘Full Access’ to grant the user full access to the Forecasting tool and click Save.

Once the privilege has been saved to the Role, verify the Role is assigned to the user(s) for the necessary project(s) for which they will need access to the Forecasting tool. For assistance on how to assign a Role to a user, review the How to Create a User help article.

 

 

Create a New Forecast

A Forecast will leverage the Jobcosts that are associated with a particular project. For assistance creating or editing Jobcosts, review the Jobcost Tool Overview help article.

To navigate to the Forecast tool, click ‘Open’ within the Job Cost tile on the tools page.

Within the Job Cost tool, click the ‘Forecasting’ tool. The Forecast tool will display a blank grid.

At the top of the grid the selected Project will display. The Project can be changed via selected another Project from the dropdown. The date dropdown can be used to view an existing Forecast for a particular month.

To create a new forecast, click the ‘Create New Forecast’ button.

A data selection dropdown will appear. Select the month end date you wish to create a forecast for. Then click ‘Ok’.

The Forecast for the month selected will display utilizing the existing Jobcosts for that project.

Scroll to the right to navigate to the “Forecast” section where cells highlighted in yellow are editable directly in the cells. Click into the cell to edit the value. Click out of the cell or click Enter on your keyboard to save the value. The cell will now display with a red triangle to note that the cell has been updated.

If a Cost Code has multiple quantity line items, when you click into the related quantity cell to edit a value, a right-side panel will open. This panel allows you to enter values for each specific quantity line item. Click into any of the ‘Forecast Quantity’ cells within the side panel to update the quantity for that Cost Type. Once complete, click ‘Save’.

 

For an “S” or subcontractor cost type, click into the “To Be Committed” cell related to that cost code/type. A side panel will open. Select a vendor contract, then click “add” to select the line items from the contract that are related to the selected cost code for which you want to include in the forecast. Enter the Quantity for each line item and then click “Save” to save the changes.

Notice that when a line item is marked as “Unit Cost”, the UC field shows as selected and only the quantity is modifiable. If a line item is not marked as “Unit Cost”, the US field shows as not selected and only the amount is modifiable. Adding line items on the fly is also possible by clicking the “+Add” button and then selecting “New Item” and entering the necessary information.

 

Locking a Forecast

A Forecast can be locked to prevent any updates from being applied to the Forecast. To lock the Forecast, click the ‘Lock’ button.

The Forecast can be unlocked by anyone that has “Full Access” forecasting privileges for that project. To unlock the Forecast and allow for editing, click the ‘Unlock’ button.

 

 

 

 

Finalizing a Forecast

When a Forecast is complete, a user can click ‘Finalize’ and the Forecast will be locked from editing. Once a Forecast is finalized for a date period, a Forecast cannot be created for a date period prior to that finalized Forecast date.

Once a Forecast is finalized, a ‘Reopen’ button will be available. If a finalized Forecast needs to be reopened for editing, click the ‘Reopen’ button and the forecast will be available for editing again.

Cost Codes created while a Forecast is finalized will not be included in that finalized Forecast. To include new cost codes in a finalized Forecast, simply reopen the Forecast and the new cost codes will be included.

If a cost code is used within a budget that has been finalized, if a user attempts to delete that cost code, an error will display that will not allow the user to delete that cost code since it is in use.

 

Notable Change

Within the "Job Cost" -> "Actual Cost" screen, the forecast (which used to be editable here) will now pull in values from the forecast with date ending closest to but less than the "As Of" date selected in the parameters. These values are no longer editable from this location.