Project reporting takes different forms from company to company. The purpose is to give others in the organisation a status update on the project. Reporting typically flows upwards in the organisational hierarchy, to a level responsible for a whole portfolio of projects — not just the individual project.
The frequency varies from company to company, from monthly to quarterly. Around the summer holidays it is not unusual to merge two months into a single reporting period.
What is measured
What all reports have in common is that they create a snapshot of selected project data at a given point in time. What you want to measure varies, but typical recurring metrics are:
Final forecast
Revenue forecast
Contribution ratio
Completion rate
Posted cost
Posted revenue
Why AIMZ can do this
Every project variable in AIMZ is tracked at all times — what was registered, when it was registered, and which user registered it.
This provides a traceability that is the very foundation of the reporting feature: you can retrieve how the project looked at a specific point in time, not just how it looks now.
Creating a report
Very little information is needed:
Name of the report
Forecast date
Posting date, or period
The combination of posted figures and forecast figures together makes up one report — a snapshot you can return to later. On the home screen, among other places, you can then compare KPIs against earlier reports to see how things develop over time.
Forecast date and posting date
This distinction is central to understanding the logic behind a report.
The forecast date is the date used as the basis for all variables in the report — that is, how the project looked at exactly this point in time, based on the forecasts in effect.
You can also choose a time of day within the date.
The posting date is the date used for incoming and outgoing invoices. It pulls in invoices posted up to and including the selected month or date.
Why two different dates?
Because the time of reporting rarely coincides with the end of the period you are reporting on.
Example: You report on May, but typically do so 1–2 weeks into June. You then want:
Forecast date = today’s date, i.e. into June — because you want the freshest, most up-to-date snapshot of the project’s forecasts, even though you are formally reporting “for May”
Posting date = up to and including May — because the posted figures should only be shown up to the period you are actually reporting on, and should not include invoices posted in June
In this way the report combines the freshest forecast picture with correctly delimited, historical posted figures for the right period.