💲Project Cost Management with Cost Tracker for Jira Cloud

Project planning is all about the three amigos: time, scope, and finance. Jira is a jack-of-all-trades tool that comes in handy for tackling the first amigo: time estimation, Agile reporting, and Scrum and Kanban boards with customizable settings. With Jira’s default features, you can get everything done when it comes to project planning and process tracking.

Jira as project management and cost tracking tool: SaaSJet experience

At SaaSJet, we’ve got a lot of projects underway, big and small, organized and chaotic. No matter the project, there’s always one question at the forefront of our minds: what’s the cost?

Recognizing that our situation isn’t unique, we developed a product to streamline the process of tracking costs across organizations.

Our concept is simple: people work on projects, and they spend their time on tasks, at varying rates. To get things done, teams require hardware, software, servers, and more.

While Excel sheets might cut it for smaller teams and fewer projects, we knew that we needed a more functional and comprehensive app to track costs across our company. So, we built Cost Tracker for Jira Cloud, a product that optimizes the process of tracking costs and reporting data in a user-friendly format.

How does Cost Tracker help estimate project costs?

Our formula for determining project costs is straightforward: people’s rates multiplied by allocated time plus direct expenses.

Now, let’s take a closer look at Cost Tracker. Once you install the app from the Marketplace, all Jira users are synced to the add-on.

1. First, you’ll need to set hourly rates for each individual teammate.
   
2. Next, you’ll need to add the list of expenses associated with the project, including one-time, recurring, project-related, user-related, and any other expenses.
   
3. The third step involves preparing the scope. For example, if you’re interested in evaluating the scope of last month’s work, you’ll need to create a filter in Jira that captures all issues with a worklog from the last month. Example of JQL:  (( “worklogDate” >= startOfMonth(-1)  )) and (( “worklogDate” <= endOfMonth(-1)  )) and project = Development
4. The last step is to generate a report, head to the appropriate page and select the saved filter, provide the default hourly rate (to get data for users without hourly rates), and specify the period for worklog and direct expenses.
   

The report will show the scope cost, team cost, and expenses associated with the selected period.

Each report is directly linked to all its elements and will be automatically updated as changes are made. Project managers can also finalize reports to freeze the numbers and prepare them for stakeholders.

As financial data is sensitive, we recommend setting the right restrictions in the additional settings.

Instead of conclusion

With the Jira and Cost Tracker duo, we’ve found an effective solution for cost and budget management. In future articles, we’ll share more insights and experiences. Our app was created to solve the actual problems we faced, and we’re confident it will be useful for others too. Here you have 30-day trial to check if app good for you. Enjoy!