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[Reprinted from The Tempo Times, Volume 3]
Looking to add a whole new meaning to tracking and managing value in your JIRA instance? Never fear: our new addition to Tempo’s suite of project portfolio management tools—Tempo Books—is almost here.
Used alone or along with our other JIRA add-ons, Tempo Books helps businesses flexibly manage and budget costs for projects and teams, designate rates, and manage actual costs and expenses for client invoicing.
So, what can Tempo Books do for your organization?
This new add-on was developed based on several years’ worth of feedback from customers who were searching for a business solution that would allow them to plan and man- age budgets both at a high-level over several different teams, as well as on a more granular level for project and team budget management.
Budget by Bucket or Detail
We learned from managers representing a variety of organizations, that budgeting costs for projects in "buckets" is a necessary component of their project and portfolio management strategy.
The specific details may not be necessary—or readily available—at the initial budget planning and forecasting stages, but a high level of planning is needed, with the capability of refining and adapting as plans, needs, and resources change.
The new Tempo Teams and Accounts functionality that links Tempo’s product suite together allows Tempo Books users to set rates and establish budgets on a per-customer, account, team, or project basis. Budgets include agreed-to rates, expense budgets, and other predicted expenditures.
Measure Performance
Costs and profitability analyses can be generated at any time with Tempo Books. As work is underway, actual costs and expenses incurred per budget can be easily captured in real-time, so that any necessary course adjustments can be made. Customer and account leads can easily track performance on a number of levels by measuring anticipated versus actual costs per customer, account, team, or project, or across your entire organization.
Customer Invoicing
With Tempo Books, customer and account leads can calculate all material costs and expenses for client billing purposes based on their customized cost plans and generate itemized expenditure reports for invoicing. Then, all submitted invoices and payment statuses can be easily tracked.
Forecasting and Analysis
With our new Tempo Accounts features, budgets can be monitored visually in real-time by measuring anticipated versus actual performance by customer, account, team, or project, so that any deviations can be quickly identified and accounted for. New reporting capabilities can be used for ad hoc and future analyses.
Along with our suite of Tempo add-ons for JIRA, Tempo Books helps round out JIRA as a complete professional services solution for your business.