What's in it.
The Project Cost System combines every aspect of project cost control into a single data model — which is what lets it report consistently, instantly, to every stakeholder, with minimal effort.
- Industry agnostic. Nothing in the model assumes oil and gas, construction, or software. It assumes a budget, a clock, and someone accountable.
- Client-definable fields. Up to 30 reporting columns per table, named by you — a multi-dimensional cost classification engine where every column is an axis you can report on.
- Automated batch imports. Feed PCS from the systems that already own the data, on a schedule, without a human retyping anything.
- Multi-currency. Buy in one currency, bill in another, report in a third — with the exchange assumption stored, not remembered.
- Fully scalable. One user to 100,000. A $50K job to a $50B program. Same model.
- Period control & append-only architecture. Fully auditable historical reporting. Last year's report still prints last year's numbers.
- Ubiquitous commenting. Notes, questions, and actions thread on any record — assigned, resolved, and kept with the number they're about.
- Saved views. Configure a grid or a curve once, save it, share it. Every grid in the system works the same way.
- Import direct from source. Schedule, contracts, materials management, field progress.
Commercial mise en place.
Every requisition, contract, PO, material transfer, expediting update, goods receipt and invoice — organized in one place, mapped to your existing systems' data through automated batch imports, and tied to the control accounts that carry the cost.
PCS is a system of reporting and communication, not the originating system of record for these documents. It consumes them for comparison and reporting. If you don't have a requisition or invoice-approval system, you can run it here — it just won't be certified for that purpose.
- The full chain. Requisition → contract/PO → goods receipt → invoice received → invoice paid.
- Commitment allocation. Committing a contract writes straight into the forecast.
- Resource planning. Staffing and other internal cost, planned, phased, and reported like any other cost.
- Revenue & client value. Client contracts, phased revenue, proforma invoices with a draft → issued → paid lifecycle, and profitability against cost.
Trends
Every forecast change is an update, and every update belongs to a trend. Trends group like changes so patterns show up across periods — and give you the project's entire change history in one register.
Deviation types
Cost deviations from plan are organized by why: scope change, delay, estimate miss, escalation, and the rest. "We're over" is not an answer. "We're over because of these four things" is.
Hidden contingency
Padding hides in estimates. PCS gives you visibility into the contingency that isn't labelled as contingency.
Monte Carlo
Simulation-backed contingency drawdown — so the number you're holding is defensible, and you can see how it should decay as the project de-risks.
Escalation
Applies the compounding effect of cost of living, inflation, and trade-policy cost impacts across the life of the project, instead of a flat percent someone guessed at once.
Annual and life-of-project
Budget changes and variances reported both ways — because your finance calendar and your project's life are two different clocks and both of them need answering.
- Cash management on its own curve. Driven by the work-in-place forecast, but separate from it — because earning it and paying for it happen in different months.
- Cash-in and cash-out. Revenue earned and invoiced against cost committed and paid, on one time axis.
- Cash call. Current reserves against the cash-out forecast, for partners and investors.
- One fact layer, many reports. Cost report, pivot, curves, and comparison maps all read from the same numbers.
- Auditable WIP history. The report accounting needs to defend an accrual, reproducible for any past period.
- Forecast-revision QC. Flags forecast revisions made after the period they belong to — the honest early warning that a number is moving under you.
Client contracts
Contract value, budgeted value, invoiced to date, paid to date, remaining to invoice — per contract, live, with the control accounts behind each number one click away.
Revenue earned
Phase when revenue will be earned, not just when you hope to bill it. Milestone contracts get revenue-only control accounts; T&M revenue rides with the cost.
Proforma invoicing
Draft → issued → paid, with issuing locking the record. Reverting models the thing that actually happens: the client rejects your invoice.