Project Forecasting: How to Compare Budget, Plan & Actuals
Learn how project forecasting in PSOhub compares Budget, Planning (ETC), and Used hours to keep projects predictable
Published: 1 June 2026
Audience
- Controller
- Project Manager
- Resource Manager
Objective
Understand how project forecasting works in PSOhub, how your Budget (baseline), Planned hours (ETC), and Used hours relate to each other, and how keeping them aligned helps you see whether a project is ahead, on track, or behind.
Introduction
Project forecasting gives you a fixed point of reference for every project. You set a Budget at the start, then measure everything that happens against it as the work progresses.
To manage a project well, you need to see three numbers together: the Budget you committed to, the hours you still plan to deliver, and the hours your team has already used. PSOhub brings these into a single view so you can compare them at any time.
This article explains what each of these three measures represents, where they live in PSOhub, and how reading them together tells you whether your project is predictable and on track.
The Three Measures: Budget, Planning and Used
Project forecasting in PSOhub rests on three connected measures. Each answers a different question about your project.
- Budget (baseline) is the effort and cost you committed to when the project was scoped. It is your fixed reference point and does not move as work progresses.
- Planning (ETC) is your Estimate to Complete: the hours you currently expect to still deliver. This number changes as your understanding of the remaining work improves.
- Used hours are the actuals: the time already booked against the project through time entries.
Read together, these three measures show the full picture. The Budget tells you what you promised, Planning tells you what you now expect, and Used tells you what has happened so far.
For this comparison to be meaningful, all three measures must be aligned at the Contract Line level. Your project structure determines how granular this tracking is, so it is good practice to structure contract lines around the phases or deliverables you want to monitor.
Where These Measures Come Together
PSOhub displays Budget, Planning, and Used hours alongside each other so you never have to reconcile them by hand.
Within a project, the resource planning area shows your Budget as the baseline still to be planned, your Planning total as the current ETC, and your overall capacity as what remains available. Switching to an actuals view adds the real value of booked time, letting you compare Budget, Planned, and Used at a glance.
Because these measures sit together, you can quickly see where planned effort is drifting away from the baseline, or where used hours are approaching the budget faster than expected. Reviewing this regularly is the single most effective habit for keeping a project predictable.