Macroscope takes the guesswork out of budgeting by providing the actual costs of previous, similar projects as a starting point.

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For managers

Before each project begins, you can use Macroscope to create your budget -- a valuable feature even without the reporting capabilities it makes possible. Follow these guidelines to use the budgeting functionality effectively:

Document your reasoning

As you fill out the budget form, use the comments fields on the right of each row to document the reasoning and calculations behind the numbers you've entered. This will make it much easier for other team members to review or collaborate on your proposal. If the same comments would be useful on many projects, you can even set them as default comments on the Resources admin page. Default comments appear when managers select the resource on a new budget, providing an easy way to coach new managers and pass on accumulated experience.

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Use the worksheet

After a project starts, you won't want to change your budget, but you can use its worksheet to experiment with different scenarios. For example, if it looks like you're about to spend more time on graphic design, you can raise the number of design hours on the worksheet and see how that affects the overall profitability. You'll catch big problems this way, but you'll also find that some increases have a relatively small overall effect, allowing you to proceed without undue worry.

Set up budget templates

After you've used Macroscope to manage several projects, you might find that projects fall into "types" with similar budgets. If that's the case, you can create default projects for each type and use them as templates for creating new projects. On the project list, look for the new project fields at the bottom, which allow you to create a new project by duplicating one of your templates.