Tracking Project Costs in Jira with Cost Tracker

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Project planning is always about time, scope and finance. Jira is a handy tool for working with the first element: estimation in time and story points, Agile reports, Scrum and Kanban boards with flexible settings, etc. So, everything related to project planning and process tracking can be done in Jira using default functionality.

Jira as project management and cost tracking tool: SaaSJet experience

We, here at SaaSJet, build the products, meaning we have a lot of projects. Small and big. Good structured and a bit chaotic. However, there is always one question on the table - what is the cost of a particular project we run? 

With this issue in mind, we built a product that helps us and (knowing that our situation isn’t unique) will help other organizations.

The concept is quite simple. People do projects. So, they spend their time on tasks. All of them have rates. To make something happen, teams need computers, servers, software, etc.

We all understand that Excel sheets are not an option when you have a large team and many projects. As one joke says - Excel is the foundation of the entire world economy :).

We decided to develop a simple and functional app that would optimize the process of tracking costs in the company and provide reporting in a convenient form -  Cost Tracker for Jira Cloud.

How to estimate project costs with Cost Tracker?

Our formula for the project cost is:  People’s rates * allocated time + direct expense.

Now, let’s see what Cost Tracker is in play. 

Once you install the product from the Marketplace, all Jira users will be synced to the add-on.

1. The first step here is to set the hourly rate for every individual teammate.

2. Then, it’s time to add the list of expenses related to the project.

You can add One-time and Recurring expenses, as well as associated expenses with Project, User or any User.

3. The third step is scope preparation.

Let’s consider the situation that the user is interested in evaluating the scope of last month. Go to Jira Filters, and create the filter that catches all issues that have a worklog for the last month.

Example of JQL: 

(( "worklogDate" >= startOfMonth(-1)  )) and (( "worklogDate" <= endOfMonth(-1)  )) and project = Development

This filter will be used for monthly reporting.

4. The last step to the Cost report, is to go to the appropriate page and Generate report.

Select the saved Filter, and provide the Default hourly rate (it helps to get the data for users who don’t have hourly rates) and period for worklog and direct expense.

The new Report will include Scope cost, Team cost and Expenses associated with the selected period.

Every report has a direct connection to all its elements and will be adjusted once something changes. For example, users can add missed Expenses later, or someone can change the worklog. 

In order to finalize the report, the Project manager can complete it, so that it will freeze all the numbers and have it ready for reporting to stakeholders, etc.

Financial data is sensitive, so make sure the right restriction is set in the additional settings.

Effective project cost tracking tool for you based on the experience of a real company

In future articles, we will share our experience and insights into using the Jira&Cost Tracker duo as a cost and budgeting management solution. This app, in particular for us, was created based on actual problems that we faced, and we are sure that our experience is not unique. Many companies faced similar problems, and we solved them.

Hope it will be useful for everyone!