On both Jira Cloud and Jira Data Center, Tempo has provided different ways to calculate cost and revenue within different Tempo apps: Cost Tracker, Timesheets, and Budgets. If you have migrated from Jira Data Center to Cloud, this article will help you understand the differences in behaviour of Tempo features between the two hosting platforms.

This article focuses on comparing Cost Tracker on Cloud versus Tempo Accounts on Data Center.

Cost Tracker tracks Time and Expenses differently than Tempo Accounts on Data Center. There is no feature parity between them, even though they both provide Cost and Revenue reports - they simply use different methods.

Similarities

Cost Tracker and Tempo Accounts both use Tempo worklogs to calculate cost and revenue, which means that Timesheets by Tempo needs to be installed to use the full functionalities for both apps.

Differences

1. Cost Tracker on Cloud

A Cost Tracker project is grouped by a JQL filter of Jira issues. It can be defined by different Jira and/or Tempo parameters.

The function of cost and revenue reports is provided through global role rates and project role rates. Cost Tracker provides global rates on Cost Tracker Roles for all Cost Tracker projects. If necessary, a Cost Tracker project can also define its local project Roles, but Cost Tracker Roles are different from Tempo Team Roles.

Cost Tracker does not use Tempo Teams to define project members, but instead uses dynamic teams where all users who have logged time on the issues within the project scope are automatically part of the Cost Tracker project’s members. Also, Cost Tracker Roles defined for cost/billing rates do not affect Tempo Teams.

Project Expenses are linked directly to a Cost Tracker project. Creating a new project with the same JQL scope will not include these expenses.

For answers to some basic questions about Cost Tracker, see Cost Tracker FAQs

2. Tempo Accounts on Data Center

Tempo Accounts serve to categorize Jira issues across different projects.

Tempo Accounts is a core feature that comes with all Tempo apps, but Tempo Accounts on Cloud does not provide Price Table like on Data Center. Tempo Accounts on Data Center comes with a Price Table by default, and it's associated with Tempo Teams and Team Roles. Tempo Accounts can use different price tables for different role rates. This makes it possible for a user of the same role to have a different rates from different Account/Price tables.

Expenses on Data Center are linked with Jira issues. Once the issue is linked to the Account, the expense is also indirectly linked to the Account. Creating a new folio with the same JQL issues will include the same expenses.

What’s available on one but not the other?

Tasks that can be done on both hosts, but differently

Grouping costs

How is this used?

To track the costs associated with a specific Project, Customer / Client, Initiative, etc. This groups all of the related issues and their associated costs together for reporting purposes.

What are the differences?

• Grouping costs on Data Center is done via a Tempo Account. You need to create a Tempo Account with a unique name and key. Then you need to assign the appropriate Tempo Account to each Jira issue (via the Account field) that you want to be assigned to the cost group.

• When moving to Cost Tracker on Cloud, grouping costs is done using Jira issue filters. This allows you to use Jira Query Language (JQL) to identify all the issues that you want to group together for your project’s costs. Cost Tracker requires a JQL with the appropriate Jira projects and issues included in order to create a project. 

What are the benefits in Cost Tracker on Cloud?

• Flexibility in defining which issues are grouped.

• No need to remember to set a specific field with the sole purpose of grouping the cost.

• You can still group by Tempo Account via JQL if you want to use that for your project

How-to documentation

Creating a Cost Tracker project  

Defining global project / account rates

How is this used?

To define the Expenses and Revenue associated with the work being done by each role (Engineer, PM, Scrum Master, etc.) who works on a project.

What are the differences?

• For Data Center, you need to create a Price Table. If the pricing is different for one of the roles working on another project, a brand new Price Table needs to be created. If the price increases for one of the roles, and it is true for both projects, both Price Tables need to be updated with this new rate. This can make price adjustments inconvenient when there are a large number of Price Tables.

• When moving to Cost Tracker on Cloud, there is a Global Rate that can be set for each role. Then for each individual cost group, you can use a custom role rate. For any roles that use the default global rate, the pricing is updated when the Global Rate is updated.

What are the benefits in Cost Tracker on Cloud?

• Ability to set a default rate that can be easily adjusted and updated for all Cost Groups that are using the default rate.

• Easily change the Cost Group rate for a role to use a custom rate instead of the default rate.

How-to documentation

Setting Rates

Reports

• There are more report options on Cloud

• The report contents are structured differently on Cloud versus Data Center

• There is no Time and Expenses report on Cloud, but you can get the view by exporting the data to Excel 

How-to documentation

Exporting project expenses

Exporting project scope data (Scope or Labor Costs)