Calculate Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (BCWS)

Last update: December 12, 2024

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Overview of Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (BCWS)

Also known as the Planned Value, the Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (BCWS) is a project performance metric that represents the amount of the task that should have completed at the time when this metric is calculated.

Adobe Workfront calculates the Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (BCWS) for both projects and tasks.

Consider the following when reviewing the values for the BCWS on a task or project:

  • Workfront calculates the BCWS for a task based on your configuration for the Performance Index Method (PIM) of the project.

    You can configure your project to calculate the PIM using hours or cost and the BCWS is also calculated using the same values.

    For information about configuring how the BCWS is calculated, see the section Configure how BCWS is calculated in this article.

  • Workfront calculates the BCWS for a project by adding all the BCWS values from all the parent tasks and individual tasks on the project.

    The values from children tasks are not added to the BCWS of the project.

Access requirements

Expand to view access requirements for the functionality in this article.

You must have the following access to perform the steps in this article:

Adobe Workfront planAny
Adobe Workfront license

New: Standard

or

Current: Plan

Access level configurationsEdit access to Projects
Object permissionsManage permissions to the project

For more detail about the information in this table, see Access requirements in Workfront documentation.

Configure how BCWS is calculated

You can configure whether the BCWS is calculated in hours or costs by configuring how the Performance Index Method (PIM) of the project is calculated.

  1. Go to a project and click Project Details in the left panel.

  2. In the Finance area, locate the Performance Index Method field and double click it to edit it.

  3. Select from the following options:

    OptionHow the calculation is performed
    Hour-BasedWorkfront calculates the BCWS using the Planned Hours of the tasks.
    Cost-BasedWorkfront calculates the BCWS using the Planned Cost of the tasks.

  4. Click Save Changes.

    The BCWS of the tasks on the project is calculated using hours or costs.

Calculate BCWS

Workfront calculates the Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (BCWS) for tasks or projects by using the following formulas:

Task BCWS = Planned Percent Complete x Task Budget

Project BCWS = SUM(BCWS values of all parent and individual tasks)

The following values are used in this calculation:

Value usedDescription of value used
Planned Percent CompleteThis is what the percent complete of the task should be by looking at the amount of time passed between the beginning of the task and today.
Task BudgetThis is the value for the Planned Hours or Planned Cost of the task.

For example, if it is February 12 today, and a task is scheduled to last from February 10 to February 20, the task should be 20% complete today. If the Task Budget (Planned Cost) is $10,000, then the BCWS for the task is:

Task BCWS = 20% x $10,000 = $2,000

Locate the BCWS for a project or a task

You can view the value of the Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled in a report or list, by adding the BCWS column to your view.

  1. Go to a list of tasks or projects.

  2. Expand the View menu and select New View or Customize View.

  3. Click Add Column.

  4. In the Show in this column: field start typing BCWS and click to select it when it displays in the list.

  5. Click Save View.

  6. The BCWS field displays in the view.

More help on this topic

Previous pageCalculate Budgeted Cost of Work Performed (BCWP)
Next pageUnderstand Budgeted Labor Cost and Budgeted Hours for projects

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