Project tracking software: time spent, workload, budget

What is project management software ?

Project management software is a tool that helps organize project activities to achieve set goals, on time.
Project software offers resource planning features to help the project manager arrange the essential components for the smooth running of the project.

Monitoring consumed on a project

The volume of time consumed on a project is an essential indicator to ensure the smooth running of the project.
We can cite the case of a consulting firm whose number of days billed is defined in advance.
Thanks to the analytical tracking functionality of time spent, the project manager can control at a glance the time consumed on the project, the resulting time lag, as well as the employees involved in each phase of the project.

The software offers each employee a dedicated Timesheet space to indicate the number of hours spent on a case, by phase, etc.
If you have profitability or budget monitoring constraints, the total number of hours per phase is correlated with the amount of fees, which allows you to calculate the profitability of the project.
Indeed, our management software by case offers a profitability status of projects.
The JOUROFF project software can be used in different sectors of activity, construction, design or engineering offices.

Why choose the JOUROFF project monitoring tool ?

The strength of our software lies in two (2) aspects : modeling and analytical monitoring!
Indeed, most software offers you a three-level (3) data structure : Project => Sub-project => Tasks...

While the JOUROFF software has developed an adaptable data model that allows you to build your activity database with complete flexibility, up to 8 levels of representation.
You model resources of the type: Project portfolios representing clients or business units, which contain projects, which in turn contain lots or sub-projects, then the list of activities or tasks, or the list of services depending on the nature of your business.

You also have the concept of analytical axes to model project groups or characteristics common to projects.
The other aspect developed by our software project is analytical monitoring.
This consists of breaking down the time spent or the workload by resource, to give you a 360° view of the time consumed in the company or on project portfolios.

Project management in the JOUROFF tool user guide

Information system modeling : project tree

Our resource planning tool places great emphasis on data representation.
We started from the observation that software is now in SaaS mode (online software) with a pre-coded data model. This does not leave many possibilities for companies to have custom software, or one that comes as close as possible to their business.
This is why we have imagined an adaptable data model that consists of representing your business context.
Thanks to our ability to adapt, the organizations that we model can be both simple and complex. We can cite the example of a company that wants to highlight internal HR management activities on one side, then research and development projects on the other side.
To do this, our system offers a repository that allows you to create several categories of activities.

Analytical axes : characteristics common to projects or groups.

Following the example mentioned above, research and development type projects may have additional business constraints.
For example, the fact that some research and development projects may be eligible for tax credit, our tool offers the project grouping functionality as an analytical axis.
From then on, it becomes possible to filter projects with the tax credit characteristic, in order to be able to list the monitoring indicators or the accumulation of charges on this type of project.
It should be noted that the analytical axes apply in several possible and imaginable cases, such as, for example, filtering a financer affiliated with one or more projects.
The case of the financer Europe on projects supposed to justify their financing granted by the European Union.

Workload planning

Planning the workload on a project is an essential function for the smooth running of the project.
In the JOUROFF software, the workload can be defined globally on a project. This is similar to the overall costing of the project.
But the workload can also be broken down by employee, in order to develop a workload planning table that takes into account the organizational constraints at the level of each employee by integrating any leave or absences into the project planning.
This approach to assigning the project load to the members of the project team makes it possible to develop a schedule or reverse planning as close as possible to the reality on the ground.

It should be noted that a reverse planning is a reverse planning method in which the project delivery date or landing point is first set, then the work to be carried out on the previous steps.
In other words, in retro-planning the end justifies the means.
Here is an example that illustrates a retro-planning in the context of project management aimed at developing a website.
♦Reserving the domain name of the site 1 year in advance (as a deadline or landing point for the project)
♦ Creating the site sections 8 months in advance
♦ Creating the content 6 months in advance
♦ Formatting the site 1 month
♦ Etc.

Whether it is for the development of a standard project schedule which starts from the start of the tasks, our load planning tool aims to plan the actions and load to be consumed over time, date by date, at the level of the project team member load.

Reconciliation of workload and time consumed

Project workload planning aims to ensure that deadlines are met, but above all that the budget or time consumed is not exceeded.
To ensure a balance between the forecast and the consumed, our software offers a module that allows you to reconcile the allocated workload and the time consumed on the project.
When the planned workload is not respected, the software displays the differential or the difference in the consumed amount in red, in order to alert the project manager.
Below is an illustration with an example:

Load estimation preference

Project management is a field whose operating mode varies depending on the company or the subject.
In project monitoring, it may happen that we are only interested in the time consumed, without being able to establish a project forecast.
Or, not being able to define a costing, but rather add the costs assigned to each employee to determine the overall cost of the project.
To effectively manage these different constraints, the JOUROFF project monitoring software offers options for estimating the cost of a project. Among them:

♦ Deactivation of load monitoring:
No load monitoring indicator will be displayed for this project.

♦ Fixed value:
Overall costing of the project. Example: 100 days estimated for the completion of the project.

♦ Fixed value, and reconciliation of allocated charges:
Overall costing, which will then be compared to the cumulative forecast charges for each employee, in order to measure the difference.

♦ Cumulative charges allocated to employees:
The overall costing corresponds to the cumulative charges allocated to each employee.

♦ No forecast, only measure the time consumed:
The software focuses on the consumed via the timesheets, that is to say, the allocations of the time consumed on the project

Budget Estimation Preference

As with the detailed workload estimation above, the software offers several options for estimating the budget.

♦ Project budget deactivation:
No cost or profitability monitoring indicators will be displayed for this project

♦ Fixed value:
Overall costing of the project. Example: 80,000 € estimated as part of the project's forecast budget

♦ Fixed value, and reconciliation of forecast HR costs:
Overall costing, which will then be compared to the forecast charge on each employee, converted into HR costs, in order to measure the difference

♦ Cumulative HR costs allocated to employees:
The overall costing corresponds to the cumulative charges allocated to each employee, converted into HR costs

♦ No forecast, only measure the cost consumed:
The software focuses on the consumed via the timesheets, allowing you to declare the hours worked on the project

♦ Fixed value, and reconciliation of forecast invoicing:
Overall costing, which will then be compared to the forecast charge on each employee, converted into an amount to be invoiced, in order to measure the difference.

♦ Cumulative invoicing allocated to employees:
The overall costing corresponds to the cumulative charges allocated to employees, converted into an amount to be invoiced

♦ No forecast, only measure the amount to be invoiced:
The software focuses on consumption via timesheets

Time recording and analytical monitoring of time spent

One of the essential components in project monitoring is the monitoring of time spent by resource.
Our time management tool is based on data modeling performed upstream in order to produce relevant indicators.

As described in the introduction, the first thing to do is to model your data model.
This goes through our data format in order to better represent your business.
This step highlights the types of resources managed by your information system.

Depending on your time and activity monitoring constraints, the JOUROFF project monitoring software offers the possibility of creating project portfolios representing clients or areas of expertise.
In these portfolios there are projects which can in turn be modeled in several phases.
The goal for the project monitoring software being the provision of a dashboard which allows to control the time spent by project, by collaborator or by activity.

Task planning

Depending on organizational constraints, not all projects require planning of tasks to be completed within a given time frame.
Organizing tasks with deadlines or milestones is generally practiced on projects with specific delivery deadlines, most often on IT projects.
In such a context, developing a Gantt chart allows you to visualize tasks over time.
In the context of project management, a milestone is an important deadline for the project, symbolized by a diamond in a Gantt chart.
The project management software JOUROFF offers a task planning tool that allows you to materialize the due dates of the various actions to be carried out until the end of the project. But also the dependencies between tasks through a Gantt chart.

However, some projects do not require task planning and delivery deadlines, because the focus is on the consumed workload, rather than deadlines and delivery times.
This aspect of monitoring the consumed workload on a project or workload is highlighted in our project tracking software to provide a global vision to project managers, from the point of view of the workload or forecast cost by portfolio of projects.
Our project management interface offers a module for planning the forecast workload over time.

Project management use cases

Project budget monitoring for an organization that receives funding

The case of associations that are required to justify their allocations or funding.
In this context, our software highlights the modeling of activities to represent critical projects and the KPIs to be monitored.
If your objective is project planning and evaluation, you can define the budget envelope to be consumed on each project.
On arrival, our tool offers you an interface to track the consumption in the form of time spent, workload, or expenses related to the cost of human resources.

JOUROFF can thus be considered as an association management software carrying out research and development studies, with the aim of justifying funding.

As an ERP or design office project software

If you are looking for project management software for a company in the digital sector, for an engineering activity or a design office, our tool is perfectly suited to the extent that it offers you a range of resource planning tools, whether for analytical monitoring of time spent, monitoring of profitability, or management of the project workload.

Our solution also allows you to edit reports on the time entry detail, invoicing by time spent, invoice template with breakdown of the amount billable by project.
We offer you a real ERP to manage the activity of your design office, whether you are an architectural firm or an engineering company.

Project monitoring combined with human resources time management

Project management is often correlated with employee working time management.
Because the company must also integrate the HR component linked to the collective agreement or employee employment contracts.
In some companies, there are two categories of employees: project management team, and employees in time entry or overtime.

In this case, our software is based on the activity repository to model the production type activity categories on one side, then the HR management category for the company's internal activities.
This gives our tool a Project Management and HR Time Tracking mutualization aspect.
The company will thus be able to inform business activities via project workload planning.
Then, the software feeds two separate dashboards for the HR part and the project monitoring part.

Research or innovation tax credit monitoring

Our project tool can also be used as part of research or innovation tax credit monitoring.
The objective is to track the hours spent on research projects by distinguishing eligible employees (doctoral student or computer engineer), to be able to extract the cost of research and development personnel as an eligible expense.
To correlate the time spent and the value convertible into euros, the software offers a module called Budget Rate, which allows you to assign the hourly salary rate for the personnel concerned to the research projects.

Task Progress