Early Preview of Project Management Software – ZilicusPM 6.0

Zilicus, the technology company that offers award winning online project management software – ZilicusPM, will be releasing next version – ZilicusPM 6.0.

I am really excited to share early preview of ZilicusPM 6.0, the next version the award winning project management software. As promised earlier, ZilicusPM is going to be yet more engaging, comprehensive, collaborative and intuitive for project teams. As always we are releasing ZilicusPM 6.0 after listening to our customers’ voice. And we are really happy to align ZilicusPM product roadmap to meet your requirements.

This release introduces budgeting and cost management features. Here are screenshot of this features. First of all, the Project & Portfolio Dashboard that shows Cost, Budget, Revenue views

Project Portfolio Budget, Expense Dashboard

Set Resource rates

ZilicusPM lets you set resource cost rate and billing rate at organization level. These rates are shown in your own currency. While adding resource to team, project manager can use its organization-level default rates or overwrite those for the project he/she manages.

Set Project Resource Rate Organization Level

Adding Resource to Project Team - Set Cost Rate

Adding Resource to Project Team – Set Cost & Billing Rate

Budgeting and Billing Management

At the time of creating project in ZilicusPM, project manager can set budget for the project. Billing preference can also be set from options : “No billing” / “Fixed Price”/ “Fixed hourly price” / “At actual resource rate” as shown below.

Create Project – Set Budget & Billing Preference

Total budget, revenue and estimated cost along with actual cost can be viewed in project dashboard as shown below.

One can view these numbers in project home screen as well.

Project-Home-Cost-Budget-View

Tracking Cost

ZilicusPM enables comprehensive cost and expenses tracking. As project manager creates work-breakdown-structure and further he/she creates a detailed schedule, based on resource cost rate (as defined in project team); the resource cost for each task is estimated. Additionally project manager can set estimated fixed cost and estimated other costs.

Update-Estimated-Fixed-Cost-For-Task

The total estimated cost of completing project is calculated as a sum of estimated resource cost, estimated fixed cost and estimated other cost.

Track Task Estimated and Actual Cost

As the task progresses and team members work to complete it, the actual cost numbers are accumulated. So based on percentage completion of the task, actual fixed cost is calculated on pro-rata basis of estimated fixed cost. The expenses are calculated based on sum of approved expense items submitted by project team members against the given task. Actual resource cost is based on approved timesheet entries of project team members against a given task, multiplied by specified resource cost rates.

Track Project Budget, Cost Expenses

Total estimated cost and actual cost are calculated by summing up the applicable cost numbers against all tasks of a given project.

Expense Tracking

Project team members can submit expense sheet against various project tasks. ZilicusPM let users specify details of expenses incurred such as

Task & project against which the expenses is to be recorded
Description of expense item, Date when expense was incurred
Expense category, Specify amount
State whether expense is billable, Reimbursable, add receipt, attachment as supporting document

When expense sheet is submitted with these details, project manager would be able to view its entry in his ‘Pending for Approval’ report. When project manager opens expense sheet for review – he can view it, edit it, change limited fields and based on his/her judgment he/she can approve or reject it. If project manager reject a given expense sheet, he/she can enter reason for rejection. The approval history is logged and team member & project manager can view audit logs later.

Expense Approval History

Managing expense categories

The expense categories you can view against any new expense item are pre-configured. ZilicusPM providers set of default expense categories. For your business, you may want to add new categories or restrict some existing expense categories. ZilicusPM allows you to configure expense categories completely.

Project Expense Categories

Timesheet & Expense Approval

Similar to expense approval mechanism, ZilicusPM has enhanced timesheet submission and approval mechanism. At organization preference level, one can set whether expense or timesheet should be approved by project manager or not. If selected for “Approval required by project manager”, the timesheet and expense entries will be submitted for respective project managers’ approval, otherwise, these entries are auto-approved on submission.