Earned Value – Aidi

The Earned Value report is a tool that enables you to estimate and compare project progress and cost against planned progress over time. With it, you can measure project performance throughout the project’s duration, and estimate its performance at the end.

This report can be run on one or more projects at a time. It consists of two Earned Value “S-Curve” reports, one based on financial data (budget, purchase orders and invoices) and the other based on schedule data and effort.

In this article:

Before using the Earned Value report

For the Cashflow report
For the Schedule report

How to use this report

Cashflow

Scheduler

Elements common to both reports

Before Using the Earned Value Report

The following data must be available in Aidi in order to obtain results in the reports:

For the Cashflow Report:

Budget

At least one version of the budget must be approved, and its distribution must be defined over time (cashflow).
The total amount of the budget must be distributed over time. Unallocated amounts will be excluded from the Planned Value calculation.

✏️Note 1: The breakdown can follow any of your templates (monthly, annual, etc.). The report prorates the data, according to the resolution selected in the report.

✏️Note 2: Cashflow data is used to calculate the Planned Value (PV)

Payment Requests and Invoices

In the case of a purchase order for which payment requests are mandatory, payment requests with the status Approved are associated with purchase orders.
In the case of purchase orders for which payment requests are not mandatory, invoices with the status Accepted are associated with the purchase orders.

✏️Note: Data from payment requests or approved invoices are used to calculate Earned Value (EV).

Invoices and Operating Expenses

Invoices with Accepted status or operating expenses with Active status are associated with purchase orders.

✏️Note: Invoice and operating expense data are used to calculate Actual Cost (RC).

For the Scheduler Report:

Scheduler Baselines

For the Earned Value Scheduler report, several scheduler baselines must be created.

✏️Note 1: One of the baselines will be chosen as the basis for calculating the Planned Value (PV).

✏️Note 2: Task progress saved in the various baselines is used as the basis for calculating Earned Value (EV).

Timesheets

Approved timesheets documenting actual effort are required.

✏️Note: Timesheets are used to calculate Actual Cost (AC).

How to use this report

When opening the report in Excel:

Select the display language.
Select a reference. This will be used for the Planned Value (budget version or scheduler baseline, depending on the report).
Click on Generate Report.

A pop-up window appears where you can select the report parameters:

Enter the start and end dates of the period covered by the report.
Select the report you wish to run (cashflow or scheduler). It is possible to select both reports. In this case, report generation will take a little longer.
Select the type of period to be displayed.
Click OK to generate the report according to the selected parameters.

Cashflow

The first tab of the report analyzes cashflow. Here you will find the following information:

Project title
Hover the mouse over the graph points to display the corresponding value. These values correspond to the values shown in the table at the bottom of the page.
Budget to completion shows the total budget for the selected budget version, irrespective of the dates selected in the parameters.
Planned Value: distribution of planned costs by periods. Cashflow as broken down in the budget page.
Earned Value: progress of purchase orders, excluding contractual changes. Progress corresponds to approved requests for payment (RFPs) (or invoices in accepted status if RFPs are not required). Earned value is calculated for each purchase order (PO) by multiplying the PO value excluding contractual changes by the % of completion.
Actual Cost: amount of approved invoices and operating expenses in active status, based on the date of expenditure (including contractual amendments).

✏️Note: For these 3 indicators, the % is calculated by dividing the amount by the budget at completion.

Scheduler

The report's scheduler tab analyzes efforts by period. Here you will find the following information:

Project title
Hover the mouse over the graph points to display the corresponding value. These values correspond to the values shown in the table at the bottom of the page.
Total planned effort corresponds to the planned effort of the Resources tab for all project tasks.
Planned value: For each task, the planned effort for the month is calculated in proportion to the task's total number of days. The total displayed in the column is the sum of the planned effort for all tasks in the month.
Earned value: This value is calculated according to the save date of the selected reference version. The percentage of progress is multiplied by the initial effort for each task.
Actual cost: This information is based on approved timesheets.

✏️Note: If efforts are associated with a parent task in the scheduler, the report calculates the planned value with the % progress of the parent task only.

Elements common to both reports (Cashflow and scheduler)

Several performance indicators (KPIs) are available in the last section of the table. Here's how they are calculated:

Cost variance $ = Earned value - actual cost
Cost variance % = Cost variance %/budget at completion.
Schedule variance $ = Earned value - Planned value.
Schedule variance % = Schedule variance $ / budget at completion.
Cost performance index = Earned value/actual cost
Schedule performance index = Earned value/planned value.
Estimate at completion = Actual cost + budget to completion - earned value
Estimated to complete = Cost to completion - earned value.
Variance at completion = Cost at completion - budget at completion