The Cost Tracker home page is where you create a new project, open an existing project, and view a list of all projects that you own or that have been shared with you. In the project list, you can get a quick overview of each project's progress and status. When you create a new project, it is immediately added to the project list in alphabetical order.
Each Cost Tracker user has their own view of the project list. At a glance, you can see who the Project Owner is for each project and when it was last synced with Jira or Structure. Additionally, you can view the total values for all your projects or a group of projects using a filter or search. The bottom row of your project list displays the total number of projects, total Actual and Budget values, and the total Remaining values.
The total Budget, Actual, and Remaining values will not be computed if your projects are in different currencies. If you’ve enabled Auto-Sync Scope for your projects, you can hover over the calendar icon by your last sync date to view when the next sync occurs. If you hover over Last Synced, you can also view the precise time that the last sync occurred.
You can sort your Budget and Actual values in increasing or decreasing order using the arrow in the header row or sort Projects, Scopes, Statuses, and Owners alphabetically using the arrow for the respective columns.
You can also search for projects using all or part of a project name.
Before You Begin
To work with Tempo Cost Tracker, you must have Tempo Timesheets installed and have the Tempo Cost Tracker Access global permission. Only a Jira Administrator can grant access to Tempo Cost Tracker.
Opening a Cost Tracker Project
To open a project from the Project List page, click its name in the list.
The project's Overview opens to let you see at a glance how your total project costs are tracking toward your budget.
Projects that are impacted by data retention settings display a notification icon next to the project name to indicate that costs are recalculated due to worklogs that were removed. Mouse over the notification icon for information.
If your organization has applied data retention settings in Tempo Timesheets, then Cost Tracker might reflect a change in the financial overview and related costs. In compliance with the same data retention settings, project costs are recalculated in Cost Tracker when associated Timesheet worklogs are expired and removed from the project.
Users are notified with an icon displayed next to the project name to indicate that project costs were adjusted based on the updated data due to expired worklogs that adhered to the set duration period and that were automatically removed when the set time was reached.
The notification icon is removed if the project scope is changed (Project > Change Scope). In this case, project worklogs are reloaded and the scope is updated, which refreshes the project and resets the notification message.
If the current data retention setting causes worklogs to be removed, then the project will be once again marked with the notification message to alert the user of recalculated costs.
The setting is turned on when your organization has a data retention policy in place; otherwise, Timesheet worklogs remain permanently stored by default.
Searching for Projects
You can search for your project name on the Project List page. You can search for part of a project name or the entire project name. The search result dynamically returns the projects that include the strings as you type.
The search filter persists in your browser and is re-applied every time you access the Project List page. Use the X to clear the search.
You can search and filter projects at the same time. These are cumulative, so the listed projects match both the search criteria and any additional filters.
Filtering Projects
If you have a long project list, it might be easier to filter the projects to view only the projects you need. Using the Filter by feature, you can filter by Owner, Status, Tags, and project attributes. You can apply multiple filters at a time.
Selecting multiple values for the same type of filter (Owner, Status, Tags, or project attributes) will return projects that have any of the selected filter values. This is similar to the OR function, where the results must contain one or the other filter.
For example, under Tags, if you filter for projects with Marketing and Finance Tags, Cost Tracker will display projects that contain only the Marketing tag, only the Finance tag, and projects that contain both the Marketing and Finance tags.
Selecting different types of filters will return projects that match all of these values. This is similar to the AND function, where the results must contain both filters.
For example, if you are filtering for projects with the Completed Status and the Training Tag, Cost Tracker will display projects that are both Completed and contain the Training tag (not one or the other).
Selecting tags from different categories in combination with tags within the same category will apply the previous two logics.
For example, if you filter for projects that have SR as the Owner and contain the Marketing and Finance Tags, Cost Tracker will display projects owned by SR that have:
- Marketing tag
- Finance tag
- Both Marketing and Finance tags
If you have projects that you want to view collectively as a portfolio, you can use the filters to display what you need. For example, if you add tags to your projects to identify the year (such as 2020), you can filter using the 2020 tag to see all projects in that portfolio.
Setting a Project's Status
You can view and edit a project's Status from the status field. The project's status can be In Planning, In Progress, On Hold, or Completed. By default, all project statuses are set as In Progress. You can also set the project's status from the Configuration page.
Budget vs Actual Tracking
The Budget column displays your planned cost for a project. Hover over the value in the Actual cost to see the breakdown by labor and expenses.
To the right of the Actual column, a bar displays what percentage of your budget has been used per project. Hover over this bar to view the percentage.
