Why has project costing become a key consideration for FDs?

The short version

• Spreadsheet-based project costing failed because it depended on manual, after-the-fact input from every team member and no amount of spreadsheet design could fix unreliable data going in.
• Mobile timesheet and expense apps removed the main barrier to daily cost tracking, letting staff log time and photograph receipts as work happens rather than at the end of the week.
• Cloud accounting turned that daily data into something finance teams could act on, replacing three separate systems (finance, expenses, timesheets) with one.
• Charities and multi-project organisations use project costing to show donors exactly how money is spent, while commercial firms use it to identify which projects are profitable.
• Real-time project costing works like a permanent time and motion study: it highlights small corrections continuously, instead of one surprise at the end of a project.

Project costing has moved from a construction-industry niche to a core finance discipline because cloud and mobile technology finally made daily, accurate time and expense capture practical. Finance directors now use it to spot scope creep, protect billable hours, and give donors or clients real visibility into how money is spent, project by project.

What is project costing, and why did the old approach fail?

Project costing is the practice of tracking the time, resources and expenses attached to a specific project, job or contract, so an organisation can see its true cost and profitability. Traditionally, this meant building spreadsheets at the project, team and group level, then chasing every person for timesheets and receipts to keep them accurate. Without reliable daily input, even the best-designed spreadsheet produced unreliable numbers and the manual effort of maintaining them offset much of their value.

The problem was the difficulty of collecting accurate input from every person, on every team, within every project. Gaps crept in for ordinary reasons – forgetfulness, competing priorities or simple inputting error. Designing and maintaining the spreadsheets was difficult enough without the constant chasing the process required.

For any system to work, it needs to be accessible and easy to use in the moment. Manual, spreadsheet-based systems were often neither. Even when field-based or remote staff remembered to log their time and expenses, physical receipts still had to be tracked down, matched and filed somewhere.

Faced with that overhead, many organisations gave up on granular, daily project costing altogether. Instead, they took a broad-brush approach: reviewing total time and spend on a job only periodically, gathering data in large batches and inputting it all at once.

As a result, work in progress became closer to guesswork than measurement. Time variances and scope creep, part-way through a job, were much harder to spot. Billable hours could go undocumented and unbilled, and re-keying batched data only added more opportunity for error.

How does real-time project costing differ from the old spreadsheet approach?

The old approach and the current one differ mainly in timing and effort, not intent. Spreadsheet-based project costing forced most organisations into a broad-brush approach, reviewing total time and spend on a job only periodically. Real-time, app-based project costing removes that trade-off, letting finance teams see accurate data daily without the manual burden that made frequent reviews impractical before.

Mobile timesheet and expense apps were the trigger. Photographing a receipt at the point of purchase, and logging time at the end of each day rather than the end of each week, removed the two biggest sources of missing or inaccurate data. A straightforward incentive helped adoption along: submitting expenses through the app, receipt photo included, meant faster reimbursement, on the condition that timesheets were kept current too.

That shift also broadened who project costing was for. It had largely been the domain of construction and contracting, where job costing was already essential. Mobile capture opened it up to any organisation running multiple projects, resources or clients, including sectors that had never used it before.

According to Grand View Research's time tracking software market report (June 2026), the global time tracking software market was valued at USD 6.13 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 14.2% through 2033, driven in large part by remote work models and demand for daily workforce and project visibility.

What does daily project costing let organisations do differently?

Moving from periodic spreadsheets to daily project costing starts with mobile timesheet and expense capture. Staff record time and photograph receipts as work happens, allowing organisations to track cost and profitability by project, team and person on a rolling basis.

For organisations juggling multiple clients, staff and projects, daily data makes it possible to identify which projects are genuinely more profitable and which people are most efficient, then act on deviations from plan as they appear rather than after the fact.

Historically, time and motion studies were run periodically to assess how efficient teams were. When project costing runs continuously, it functions like a permanent time and motion study. Small corrections happen along the way.

Accountability follows the same pattern. Finance directors don't only use this data to monitor and drive profitability. The system increases transparency at every level, geographically, by person and by project.

Where iplicit fits

iplicit brings project costing, time and expense capture and approval workflows together on one cloud platform, rather than the separate systems many finance teams pieced together during the shift to mobile. Costs can be allocated and analysed across departments, projects or sites and iplicit customers across tech/SaaS, financial services, charities and education already use this dimensional analysis to track project profitability without expanding their chart of accounts.

Automated approval workflows route submissions and requests without paper trails or "can you sign this?" follow-ups and every approval is logged for audit. Role-based access means people only see the areas of the system relevant to them, so project staff with specific expertise can be brought into real-time cost discussions that used to sit solely with finance. And because iplicit's open API and pre-built integrations connect core finance to other systems, project data doesn't need rekeying between separate timesheet, expense and accounting tools.

Bridges Outcomes Partnerships has around 25 projects set up in iplicit after moving from Xero. "I feel a lot less trepidation now when people tell me there's a new project coming down the pipeline," says Colin Huntington, Director of Finance and Enablement.

Contract Energy Management had around 10,000 projects in its old Sage system. Its CFO, Tom Siviter, says that "brought Sage to a standstill". He adds: "The main thing I love about iplicit is the unlimited number of dimensions. It allows us to see reports and analysis right down to transaction level quickly. We can use that data to inform decisions, spot trends and see whether the market is responding as we expected."

The bottom line

Project costing stopped being a specialist tool for contractors once mobile and cloud technology made daily, accurate data practical for anyone running multiple projects. That shift gives finance directors earlier warning of scope creep and margin erosion, gives project teams more say in financial decisions that affect their work and gives donors or clients real evidence of how their money is spent.

Done well, real-time project costing can be used to build transparency and trust.

Ready to see how project costing works in a single cloud platform? Take iplicit's quick tour or book a demo to see it against your own project data.