Know Your Project Costs
Before They Become Problems
Track time costs against budgets in real-time. See which projects are profitable, where overruns happen, and how team resources are allocated. Make data-driven decisions.
The Project Cost Visibility Problem
Most teams discover they're over budget after it's too late. Without real-time cost tracking, project profitability is a guess until the final invoice.
How Asrify Tracks Project Costs
Real-Time Cost Tracking
As your team logs time, project costs update automatically. See today's spend, this week's spend, and total project cost anytime.
TimeEntry × pay_rate = real-time cost calculationBudget vs Actual
Set project budgets and watch actual costs accumulate. Get visibility into burn rate and predicted final cost based on current pace.
Project budgets with live cost comparisonTeam Cost Allocation
Different team members have different pay rates. Asrify calculates each person's cost contribution to the project accurately.
Per-user pay rates with project allocationCost vs Revenue Reports
Compare what a project costs (team time × pay rates) against what it bills (client time × bill rates). See true profit margins.
Reports showing cost, revenue, and marginMilestone Costing
Break projects into milestones and track costs per phase. Identify which project phases consume the most resources.
Milestone-level time and cost aggregationMulti-Currency Normalization
Teams working in different currencies? Asrify normalizes all costs to your base currency for unified reporting.
Currency conversion for consolidated reportsYour Project Costing Workflow
Set Up Project Budget
Create a project with a budget in hours or currency. Define milestones if the project has phases with separate budgets.
Uses: ProjectsConfigure Team Rates
Set pay rates for each team member. This determines the cost calculation when they log time to the project.
Uses: TeamsTrack Time as You Work
Team members track time against the project. Each entry automatically calculates cost based on their pay rate.
Uses: Time TrackingMonitor Project Dashboard
Check the project dashboard to see current cost vs budget. Identify if you're on track or heading toward an overrun.
Uses: ReportsAnalyze & Adjust
Use cost reports to understand where time goes. Reallocate resources or adjust scope before costs spiral.
Uses: ReportsCase Study: Software Agency Budget Control
Alex, Project Manager at Dev AgencyAlex manages a $50K software project with a 5-person team. Previously, the agency only knew project costs at month-end when timesheets were processed. By then, overruns were already locked in.
With Asrify, Alex sees project costs daily. Each developer has their hourly cost configured. The project dashboard shows "$34,200 of $50,000 budget used" in real-time. When costs accelerate, Alex spots it within days, not months.
The project came in at $48,500 - under budget for the first time. Alex caught a scope creep issue early when week-over-week costs spiked. The team adjusted before costs became unrecoverable.
"Seeing costs daily changed everything. We manage projects, not just track them."
Real-Time vs End-of-Month Cost Tracking
Discover overrun after project ends
Spot cost trends weekly
No visibility during project
Live dashboard updates
Manual spreadsheet calculations
Automatic cost aggregation
Guessing team cost allocation
Per-person cost tracking
React to problems
Predict and prevent problems
Understanding True Project Economics
Most service businesses measure revenue but ignore costs, creating dangerous blind spots about profitability. A $100,000 project looks successful until you realize the senior team worked twice the planned hours. Real profitability requires tracking both sides of the equation: what clients pay and what delivery actually costs.
The distinction between direct and indirect costs matters significantly for project pricing. Direct costs—team time on specific projects—can be tracked precisely. Indirect costs—office overhead, administrative time, software subscriptions—must be allocated across projects using reasonable formulas. Many businesses set hourly rates that cover direct costs but forget the indirect ones, slowly bleeding money on projects that appear profitable.
Fixed-price projects require more rigorous cost tracking than hourly billing, not less. When scope and price are locked, every hour over estimate comes directly out of profit margin. The insight that a particular type of work consistently runs 30% over estimate enables either pricing adjustment or process improvement—but only if the data exists.
Frequently Asked Questions
When creating or editing a project, set a budget in hours or currency. Asrify tracks time costs against this budget and shows percentage used.
Yes. Create milestones within a project, each with optional scope items. Time tracked to milestone tasks aggregates separately for phase-by-phase cost analysis.
Set individual pay rates per team member. When they log time, their rate is used for cost calculation. This gives accurate project costs even with varied team composition.
Profit margin = (Bill Rate Revenue - Pay Rate Cost) / Bill Rate Revenue. Asrify calculates this per project, showing true profitability after team costs.
Set hour estimates on tasks or milestones. Reports compare estimated hours against actual tracked time, highlighting where estimation was off.
Absolutely. Set the fixed price as your "budget" and track costs against it. Even if you bill a flat fee, knowing your costs reveals if the project was profitable.
Take Control of Project Costs
Stop guessing project profitability. Track costs in real-time, compare against budgets, and make adjustments before overruns happen. Start free.