Actual Cost

Since you are using it for monthly billings you can never earn more or be paid more than what is the budget for each activity in the schedule. He already sees the budget and if you are done with the activity you get 100% of the budget. Or if you are 50% complete with and activity your ACTUAL cost is 50% of the budgeted amount. Why should he care if it takes you twice as much money to complete this activity as what you have budgeted or if it takes you 50% less money to complete this activity. If you can find a sway to do it faster and cheaper then so be it that is your advantage or profit whatever you want to call it. Conversely if you spend more money than what you have budgted that come sout of your pocket.

Now if this schedule is internal and you are using your ACTUAL costs then that is a different story and I ma sure that you have an internal accounting system that will track the actual cost in more detail that and by cost code than what is in the schedule.

So for billing purposes you can never earn more than the budget. So you total actual cost that the client sees in the schedule will never be more than the budgeted amount and the when the activity is 100% complete it will never be less than the budgeted amount.

The actual Cost is supposed to be the Actual Expenses of the Contractor. In my opinion, these data shall not reach the Client. In this case, Actual Cost shall be zero and CPI will not be reported to the client, only SPI.

For internal report within the company management, Actual Cost shall be encoded so that the company management may have a real picture of the project status.

regards,