Project managers must continuously compare actual costs to their budget during the entire life cycle of a project. Staying within projected costs is almost always of critical importance, and it's no small feat to accomplish. It requires that you have a proactive strategy to identify specific measurements of real-time cost data and requires that you create a schedule to analyze and react to that data throughout your project.

The following resources will teach you about the types of cost reports to include in your analysis, the value of setting up a cost-tracking system for your project, and which categories to track within such a system. You'll also learn about establishing review and approval procedures to make sure that you stay aware of and in control of important cost details.

If you use Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003 to track your costs, you can learn more about several specific strategies, including how to take corrective action on identified cost overruns. You can also use templates to help you keep your project costs on track, including a Pareto chart that prioritizes your most pressing cost problems and a resource plan that details specifics about your project resources.

Let the following tools and resources help you stay securely within your project budget.

• Manage costs during the project life cycle (Article)
  Use these strategies to ensure that your project stays within your budget.
• Goal: Monitor costs (Article)
  Examine your current, actual, remaining, and baseline cost totals in Project 2003.
• Goal: Adjust costs to keep the project on budget (Article)
  After you identify a budget problem, learn to take corrective action with Project 2003.
• Project earned value analysis (Template)
  Track time-phase expenses for projects by using this template.
• Cost analysis with Pareto chart (Template)
  Use this statistical method to identify the most critical cost problem areas to improve.
• Project resource plan (Template)
  Use this template to communicate project resource planning information to all key project stakeholders.