This glossary defines the main terms used across project budgets, resourcing, variations and cost-to-complete estimates.
Budget and pricing
Term | Definition |
Original budget | The project’s initial budget baseline, shown separately from variations on the Budget tab. |
Original Hours | The project’s original budget hour total on the original budget page. It adds up each task’s budget hours from its budget lines (or the task’s own quantity in hours when the lines hold no hours). |
Budget hours | The hours of a task’s budget lines. Deliverable footer hours on the budget page, the Original Hours card and variation hours deltas use these. Assignment rows do not set them. |
Internal budget | The estimate used to plan and monitor delivery. Its value depends on the task pricing and estimates used; it is not the same as actual payroll or incurred expenses. |
Contract value | The commercial value associated with the client’s agreed work. |
Buffer | The difference between contract value and internal budget. A positive buffer means contract value is higher. |
Dynamic pricing | Task pricing calculated from resource and expense estimates. |
Fixed pricing | A manually entered task price. Where estimates exist, the internal estimate and client price can differ. |
Spent | The approved time and costs recorded against a task (and rolled up from there). Spent updates when those actuals sit on the task; there is no manual percent charged field on the budget, including on fixed fee tasks where time value differs from the fee charged. Invoices raised outside Drum, or before the current tasks existed, do not write spent onto those tasks by themselves. If an older invoice raised in Drum includes time lines for the same project, move those invoiced time entries onto the matching tasks. The invoice stays as issued, and invoiced time cannot be moved to a different project. |
Percent of budget | Spent divided by the current task budget. After a variation, the percent uses the revised budget and the actuals already on the task. |
The budget spent pill is not client billing. What you have charged the client lives in Progress Claims or invoices. On a fixed fee job, recorded time often will not match the fee charged, and there is still no control to set spent or percent of budget to match fee expended. A baseline or Opening position progress claim sets Prev. Claimed for later claims; it does not write spent onto the task budget bars.
Resourcing
Term | Definition |
Resource estimate | A quantity and rate used to estimate work on a task, optionally associated with a resource type and preferred person. On the original budget these are the task’s budget lines. |
Staff assignment | The person associated with a task or resource requirement. |
Allocation | Work scheduled for a person over particular dates or weeks. |
Actual time | Time logged against the task. Logging time is distinct from creating a future allocation. |
Budget line / Variation / Assignment (pill) | Tooltip labels on the Work tab and resourcing budget money pill. They show whether the money comes from a paired budget line, a variation-created row, or an assignment row’s own planned money. |
Variations
Term | Definition |
Variation | A recorded change to a project’s scope, resources, budget or commercial value. |
External variation | A change associated with the client agreement. Approved changes can alter contract value. |
Internal variation | An internal adjustment that does not change the client’s contract value. |
Delta | The change represented by a variation, rather than the entire resulting project total. |
A draft variation can appear in the variation list before its changes are approved. Its listed value is not, by itself, evidence that the project’s active budget has changed.
Cost to complete
Term | Definition |
Cost to Complete (CTC) | A forecast of the value required to finish the remaining work, assessed at an effective date. |
Remaining Budget | The budget remaining after the recorded usage shown by Drum. This is a budget balance, not a fresh assessment of the work still required. |
Estimated % Complete | The progress estimate recorded for the task in the CTC assessment. |
Previous CTC | The earlier forecast shown for comparison with the current assessment. |
Effective Date | The date to which the CTC assessment relates. |
Active CTC | The estimate identified as active for the project’s current forecasting. |