Top Tips for Organising Finances for Different Projects

Well-organised financial records are essential for managing budgets without things getting out of hand. Dealing with the finances of multiple jobs or income streams at the same time can get a bit confusing though, so it’s often useful to look at project finances separately. It’s a bit like tidying things into their own relevant folders, rather than rummaging through towering piles of documents.

In this article we’ll look at who might benefit from organising their finances according to project or job, and share some tips to help.

Who can benefit from organising business finances by project?

Anyone who runs a business which involves managing multiple tasks, budgets, or income streams at the same time is likely to find recording their finances as different projects to be useful. It makes it much easier to see what makes a profit and where money gets spent.

This is an extreme example, but project financial management can be just as useful in other ways. For instance, if you have multiple jobs with the same client, each with their own budgets. Or if you operate a charity and need to keep targeted grant funding separate from other income so you can make sure it gets spent in the right place.

Managing and recording finances for projects

The way you separate the financial records in your business depends entirely on the type of projects you’re involved in. For example, you might have a single business which owns and lets multiple properties, in which case creating a different project ‘pot’ for each one will help you spot any trends more easily. Is one property more of a drain than another? Is one property’s income funding repairs elsewhere?

We share some of our top tips for keeping your projects organised.

Create a realistic budget

Not every business assigns a clear budget for every project. You might find it more useful to simply keep an eye on things as you go, and make any adjustments from there.

But if you need that project to turn a profit, restrict funding from a grant, or work within the amounts authorised by your client, it’s essential.

Grouping jobs and projects can help you make more realistic budgets too. You’ll be able to view reports for previous projects, giving you a clearer picture of the costs involved so you can give more accurate quotes to clients and minimise the risk of overspending (and really uncomfortable phone calls).

Small businesses are often guilty of offering up time without assigning a value to it. Work out how much your time is worth, and ensure it’s properly budgeted for. 

Project managing your finances will also help if the scope of work changes for whatever reason. This can affect spending or the fee you need to charge for your time. Having everything broken down according to project will help you decide whether you want to absorb the cost or pass it on to your client.

Decide on a tracking tool

Excel might seem like a low-cost option, but let us stop you right there. Spreadsheets are great for analysts and those who are genuinely proficient, but they take time (which is valuable) to set up correctly and require management.

To be genuinely useful, your spreadsheet should be able to feed information from separate projects into your overall business accounts. We hope you like complicated formulas.

If you’re sold on upgrading to a tracking tool, what to look for? Decide on what’s most important to you and your business. There are lots of considerations here, including:

We can’t talk about project finance tools and not mention Pandle. If you’re looking for intuitive, easy to use accounting software that’s MTD compliant and available online or as an app, then look no further. Find out more about Pandle’s features here.

Categorise financial items

One of the most common mistakes to trip businesses up is lumping all project costs into one category. Yes, it’s useful to see all the costs associated with that project. But simply labelling them with the project name prevents drilling down further, when doing so might draw attention to patterns of chronic overspend occurring at the same point in each project.

Financial data should be one of a business’ most valued assets. Agree on standard categorisation to use across projects and stick to it. It’s that simple.

That way businesses are able to not only pull detailed, consistent reports per project, but it allows for simple and effective cross-project reporting.

Spending too much on a particular financial category? It’s going to show up by looking at performance across projects.

These are invaluable insights that will lead to project optimisation and ultimately mean increased profit margins achieved through data-driven efficiencies.

Wow we sounded really grown-up and knowledgeable then.

Implement a process

It’s easier to manage and plan finances if it’s just one person doing it, but even that doesn’t guarantee consistency. Whatever the size of the team and the variety of roles involved in each project, set out early on who is responsible for tracking spend, and set up a process for capturing financial information.

Once a process has been established, roll it out across the business to use for multiple projects. That way everyone knows what their role is and what is expected of them.

Who is responsible for the budget? What about tracking spend vs budget? What’s the agreed timeframe to input that information? These are all key questions that businesses need to answer to set up a repeatable process that becomes fail-proof.

How can Pandle help?

Pandle is designed to make managing multi-project financial management easy. How? Pandle allows users to view financial reporting for individual projects in just a few clicks. But more than that, Pandle is all about keeping it simple.

Learn more about using Pandle to make business accounting easier. Create an account today and decide what to do with all the extra time you get back.