Building a Project Costing Dashboard in IFS for Real-Time Budget and Forecast Control

Are your cost reports always weeks behind? By the time the numbers arrive, the window to course-correct has closed. Project managers and controllers are constantly forced to make decisions using outdated and incomplete data.

The cost of that delay is staggering. In a study reviewing over 300 global megaprojects, McKinsey found that cost overruns average 80%, while schedule delays hit 50%. When you can’t see real-time financial health, budget drift and missed forecasts become the norm.

IFS holds the right data. But unless you build a clear, connected dashboard, it stays locked in silos across Finance, Projects, and EAM. This guide will show you how to change that, so you can track costs in real time, forecast accurately, and protect project profitability.

What Breaks Project Cost Tracking in IFS

IFS stores the right data, but not in one place. Finance handles budget and actuals. Projects own timelines and work breakdown structures. EAM logs asset usage and equipment costs. Each module uses different terms, tables, and logic.

Most teams extract data manually, merge it in Excel, and email reports days later. There’s no unified data model, no automated validation, and no way to track cost allocation or cost variance across the project timeline. Forecasts slip, metrics mislead, and decisions stall.

Without a connected, real-time management dashboard, there’s no way to track total cost per project, no control over planning and cost, and no visibility into project performance. You can’t improve what you can’t measure, and fragmented data makes measurement impossible.

What a Real-Time Costing Dashboard Should Deliver

An effective project costing dashboard in IFS connects budget, actuals, and forecast data in one place. It unifies Finance, Projects, and EAM data to track allocation, surface variances, and control cost. This isn’t a report. It’s a tool for project execution.

To improve project cost management, the dashboard must operate with live data and reflect what’s happening across the project lifecycle, not a week later.

Core Functions of a Costing Dashboard

A real-time management dashboard should deliver:

• Dynamic cost-to-complete calculations that update daily
• Variance detection for actual vs budget across phases
• Forecast models tied to the project schedule and scope
• Drill-downs that link metrics to team-level activity and costs
• Interactive filters for budget category, region, or start and end dates

The dashboard should run on a validated data model that integrates planning, execution, and cost tracking. This lets teams track performance from baseline to phase-level profitability.

Without this structure, cost allocation dashboards, project metrics, and financial planning workflows all fall apart. Teams can’t track total cost, adjust resource plans, or align spend to milestones. The right dashboard shows exactly where the budget stands, where it’s going, and what needs to change to stay in control.

Tools to Build a Real-Time Project Costing Dashboard in IFS

To build a complete project costing dashboard, you need tools that connect live data, support calculated logic, and produce visuals that guide action. IFS has native options, but many teams turn to external platforms to gain more flexibility, customization, and real-time insight.

Native Tools in IFS

IFS Lobby can display high-level KPIs, tables, and static metrics. It works for basic budget tracking or single-module views. However, it lacks time-based filters, custom calculations, and drill-through functions needed for full project cost allocation. The built-in reports are often limited by fixed templates and outdated data models.

Power BI and External Reporting Platforms

Microsoft Power BI connects directly to IFS through exports, data APIs, or live queries. It enables interactive dashboards, time-based filters, and custom measures for costs and revenues, margin movement, and forecast changes. If you're unsure how to structure these builds, Astra Canyon offers IFS ERP reporting expertise to help teams model scenarios, track allocation patterns, and compare projects across multiple dimensions.

Tools like SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) can be useful for scheduled reports and formatted financial planning outputs, especially for finance teams needing consistency across reporting periods.

If you're using Power BI dashboards, make sure your data model in Microsoft Power BI is clean, validated, and includes all required fields from your IFS project dataset, including cost categories, resource types, and phase-level actuals.

When Custom Builds Are Worth It

Custom builds become essential when your project model pulls data across multiple IFS modules like Finance, Projects, and EAM. If you're calculating project finance, custom cost formulas, or material cost multipliers not supported natively, off-the-shelf tools will fall short. Custom dashboards also add value when the outputs are used by multiple teams or presented to executives who expect clarity, accuracy, and visual control.

Another key reason to build custom is consistency. If your model needs to align across different project schedule phases, with shifting assumptions and evolving scopes, you’ll need a system that adapts. A custom approach lets you control the structure, define reusable templates, and scale reporting across projects without rebuilding from scratch every time.

Key Data Sources to Connect

An effective project costing dashboard in IFS depends on complete and synchronized data. If one module is missing or disconnected, the results become misleading. Forecasts lose accuracy, cost metrics become inconsistent, and the dashboard loses its value as a financial planning tool.

Finance: Your Budget and Actuals Baseline

Finance data provides the structural core of the dashboard. Pull General Ledger actuals, budget plans, and defined cost categories to establish the approved spend framework. These inputs support all cost control calculations, enable cost variance tracking, and allow for consistent reporting across teams.

Without this baseline, your dashboard cannot reconcile forecasted values against actuals. Financial outputs become estimates rather than verified figures. In models using Power BI, GL data should be mapped precisely to the project cost structure to avoid discrepancies in totals or allocations.

Projects: Where Execution Data Lives

The Projects module contains the operational side of the cost picture. Pull labor hours, work orders, baseline timelines, and completion percentages. This data allows you to align planned activities with actual execution and measure how resources are being used across the project schedule.

If you fail to connect the Projects data to Finance, labor costs may appear underreported. This leads to inaccurate margin calculations and distorted project performance metrics. Ensure project IDs, task codes, and cost centers align cleanly across modules to maintain dataset integrity.

EAM: Equipment and Indirect Cost Tracking

Enterprise Asset Management holds data on equipment usage, asset assignments, and repair costs. These costs often bypass GL and Projects, but they materially impact the total cost structure, especially in construction projects or industrial work.

Skipping EAM in your model means indirect costs go untracked, and asset utilization cannot be measured against budget. This reduces the accuracy of cost allocation dashboards and conceals key contributors to project overspend.

Optional Sources: Procurement and Time & Expense

Procurement data provides insight into committed spend that hasn’t yet posted to the ledger. This is critical for cash flow forecasting and recognizing financial risk before it appears in actuals. Time and Expense records help capture soft costs related to travel, contractor billing, and internal labor charges that may not flow directly from Projects or Finance.

Including these sources enables a more complete view of project cost and revenue throughout the execution cycle. When modeled correctly, they reduce variance and increase forecast accuracy.

Why Integration Is Essential

No single module contains everything. Finance owns the budget. Projects manages execution. EAM tracks indirect spend. Procurement and Time & Expense fill in the rest. When all of these are tied into a clean, validated data model, the dashboard becomes a tool for financial planning, not just reporting.

A connected model supports allocation logic, verifies calculations across sources, and gives project teams the data they need to manage cost with precision. This is what transforms a report into a working system for decision-making and control.

Critical KPIs to Include in the Dashboard

Dashboards fail when they rely on static charts or vanity metrics. A working management dashboard in IFS should only include KPIs that influence budget control, improve forecast accuracy, and drive action across the project lifecycle. The right KPIs support both financial teams and project managers with relevant, real-time insights tied to the actual flow of work.

Budget vs Actual

This is the foundation of project cost control. Track budgeted figures against actuals by cost category, time period, or project level. For clarity, link the baseline project budget from Finance with real-time expense data from Projects and Procurement. This allows teams to detect overruns early and correct allocation issues before they affect downstream tasks.

Forecast Variance

Forecasting is only useful if you can measure its accuracy. This KPI shows the gap between the current forecast and expected outcomes. Integrate live cost data with Power BI dashboards to surface this metric in real time, especially when assumptions shift. In more advanced builds, use a set of what-if parameters to simulate change impacts before they happen.

Cost-to-Complete

This forward-looking metric predicts how much funding is still required to finish the work. It combines actual costs to date with revised estimates based on current progress. When linked to work breakdown structures and phase completion data, it becomes a proactive control measure that supports both project finance and financial planning.

Margin Erosion

Profitability isn’t static. Track margin movement across the project timeline to see where costs creep beyond plan. Connect this KPI to both direct and indirect cost sources to surface root causes, such as equipment inefficiencies or underreported labor. Dashboards built in Microsoft Power BI can visualize erosion patterns by team, task, or asset over time.

Burn Rate

This shows how fast the budget is being used relative to time and scope. A high burn rate might indicate overstaffing, procurement delays, or misaligned resources. Tie this metric to timesheet entries, procurement dates, and actual output to measure how well effort is converting into progress. It helps validate whether project productivity is matching planned velocity.

KPIs should be filterable by project, manager, and date range for targeted insight. When integrated into a data-driven model, they move the dashboard beyond static reporting and turn it into a working system for cost management, accountability, and decision-making across the team.

Mistakes That Break Your Project Cost Dashboard

A dashboard only works if it delivers actionable, accurate information. In IFS, that requires clean inputs, aligned metrics, and automation that keeps pace with execution. If any of these elements fall short, the dashboard becomes a risk, misleading decision-makers, and wasting time.

Missing Key Cost Inputs

Excluding labor costs or indirect expenses from your data model weakens the entire output. For example, leaving out EAM or internal team member hours removes a major slice of real costs. The result is a cost picture that underreports total spend and misrepresents profitability. If the model doesn't track every contributor to delivery, your project finance data is incomplete.

Overcomplicating the Visuals

Crowding too many elements into one view turns insight into noise. Good dashboards limit the visual scope to essential project metrics and provide filters for deeper analysis. Use drill-down paths, not cluttered pages. Your dashboard must help managers move fast, not distract them with visual clutter.

Using Misaligned Metrics

If your metrics don’t match the language of finance, they’ll be ignored. Build your cost measures using structures recognized by both Finance and Project teams. That means aligning budget allocation, phase tracking, and financial planning categories. If a metric can’t be traced back to approved reports, it doesn't belong in your dashboard.

Manual Processes That Slow Everything Down

Static files and spreadsheet exports create lag. A dashboard built on manual refreshes cannot keep up with project velocity. To support cost management across phases, connect directly to IFS through APIs or set up scheduled data refreshes. A Power BI file using a live connection allows for faster validation, scenario modeling, and better control over changes in assumptions.

Dashboards must work at the speed of project execution. Anything slower becomes irrelevant.

When It’s Smarter to Let Experts Build the Dashboard

Some dashboards aren’t worth building internally. When data from Finance, Projects, and EAM won’t align, or when your team can’t maintain a clean, consistent data model, progress stalls, and the results don’t hold up under review.

If the dashboard needs to support financial planning, track project finance, or manage cost allocation across multiple departments, accuracy is non-negotiable. Allocation logic, role-based access, and data coverage must all be in place from day one.

Astra Canyon builds dashboards that deliver reliable metrics across the entire project lifecycle. Whether the output lives in IFS or a dashboard in Microsoft Power BI, our team ensures the model is stable, scalable, and ready for change.

If your dashboard needs to support real decisions, not just reports, Astra Canyon can build the model for you. We make sure the structure works, the data holds, and the numbers stay accurate as the project evolves.

Get a Custom IFS Dashboard Built

A project costing dashboard is only useful if the data is complete, the logic holds, and the model stays stable throughout execution. IFS gives you the raw inputs, but it takes the right structure to turn those inputs into clarity, control, and action.

With the right model in place, your team can forecast with confidence, manage cost proactively, and keep financial performance aligned from start to finish. The dashboard stops being a report and becomes a system for real-time decision-making.

If you're ready for a dashboard that delivers accurate and reliable metrics, Astra Canyon is ready to build it with you.