Can Redmine Help You Manage Project Finances Visually?

Redmine goes a long way to help increase project profitability thanks to projecting the portfolio’s financial statements, project budgets, cash-flow predictions, and project price calculations that are very simple to use. The following are some Redmine finance plugins and tools you can use if you would like a visual representation of your project finances when you manage them.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

A basic project management technique in Redmine, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), manages the decomposition of the project into parts that are deliverable. What the WBS plug does is visualize all tasks of a project in mind map view and allows you to create project structure easily – project’s decomposition. In Work Breakdown Structure, you may create new project tasks while you see the entire project’s structure.

There is no doubt that the Work Breakdown Structure helps to make Redmine project planning and project finance management very easy and visual as well!

You can download this basic plugin from the official site for free. Furthermore, you can buy the PRO version as well, which is also available on the website.

In addition, the Work Breakdown Structure Plugin also lets you visualize the Redmine project according to tasks’ status, assignee, % done (percentage), tracker, and priority. 

Important Work Breakdown Structure Plugin Features

• Drop and drag sorting of projects and issues
• Mind map visualization of the issues, projects, and sub-issues ( see the picture down below)
• Creation of issues from the mind map
• Recognizable keyboard shortcuts from other tools of a mind map
• Color visualization of trackers and issues completion
• Zoom in and zoom out
• 100 percent compatible with the Redmine 3.0+
• Step Back Button

You should definitely give the Redmine Work Breakdown Structure plugin a try! It is the best tool for project management, finances, and planning in Redmine.

Specifications

• Available as a paid or free plugin for Redmine
• 100 percent open source plugin
• Available for a free of cost trial
• One Redmine instance
• GNU GPL 2 license
• Unlimited projects
• Unlimited users

Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS)

As stated before, you can manage project finances visually in a Redmine project. In order to have a Cost Breakdown Structure, you should install both Budgets and WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) plugins. All  WBS finances are based on the data of project budgets where you have costs/incomes and personnel expenses in reality and plan. This plugin happens to be most useful and practical during the budget setting phase in the project planning stage and continuing project finance monitoring.

Important Features:

• No requirement to switch between cost breakdown structure and work breakdown structure
• The swift and easy visual insight into all project-related finances
• The creation of new expense/income from mind map
• Print the mind map and include budgets for every task and project
• Clear color visualization of a negative, positive and neutral balance of your project budgets

Project Cash Flows and Budgets

It is an immensely useful plugin that visually monitors costs, revenues, payroll expenses, costs, and the project’s final profit. In addition, it also enables you to monitor real cash entries in context with the established plan and provides projects’ loss/profit statements, cash flow history, and cash flow prediction.

Important  Features:

• Monitoring of costs, revenues, payroll profits and costs, reimbursements and travel expenses
• Project budget reality versus budget plan
• Payroll expenses are determined from the time each worker spends multiplied by hourly rates
• Internal and External hourly rates
• Definition of work hourly rates by members, activities, and roles of the project team
• Prediction of cash-flow over the Redmine project portfolio

Gantt Chart Cash Flow

Your Gantt Chart’s cash flows are a very valuable Redmine tool that is most practical for an immediate outline of project profitability over the passage of time, improved balancing of cash flows across Redmine projects, and for comparison of actual and planned flows of cash.

Important Features

• Illustrates all the cash flow balances right in the Gantt chart
• Illustration of Balances / individual projects in respective project bars
• Money module is needed to edit and see these balances
• Shows details and information per subprojects

Finance Management Dashboard

Predefined dashboard (personal) appropriate for the role of a Finance Manager is designed specifically to offer an awareness of existing performance pertinent to finance management.

Important Features:

• Billing and wages report
• Budgets overview
• Budget on project
• Sales dashboard
• A detailed cash flow report

Invoicing and Payroll Sheets

This particular Redmine plugin includes timesheets of projects, multiplied by the hourly rates. External/internal hourly rates and filtering options enable you to generate payroll and invoicing sheets very easily. Integration with Contacts plugins and Customer Relationship Management allows you to send invoices in XLSV, PDF, or CSV to the consumer directly from the Redmine application.

Important Features:

• Hourly rates multiplied by timesheets
• Invoicing sheets by project
• Payroll sheets by user
• Intricate settings and filtering 
• Easy insight and reporting into payrolls and invoices
• Integration with Customer Relationship Management and Contacts plugins – you will get the full invoice is simply a couple of clicks!

Moreover, Redmine Finance plugins allow you to easily observe all of your outcomes and incomes and monitor assigned corporate accounts. You can manage and control the disapproval and approval of operations. Furthermore, you can assign each expense or income to a particular category or stream, which makes monitoring finances clear and easy.

Bottom Line

Managing project finances visually in Redmine is doable if you install the aforementioned plugins and tools, and use them together to keep track of all your margins and stay ahead in your business.