What is it: Create a project budget and define the review period, typically weekly. Assign reporting categories, like consulting fees, T&E, internal labor, infrastructure, etc. Define work categories and assign codes to determine if that is an expensed or capitalized cost. Track actuals to budget with variance based alerts.

Why do I need it: Allows for accurate monitoring, management and investigation of all project related costs in one location. Alerts based on variance between actual and budget can be automatically sent to the PMO or VP or Executive Sponsor.

What is it: Enter, review and approve change orders in CCP. You can estimate, create the business case and plan resources. Use workflows to route, audit and track the change order.

Why do I need it: Provides full accountability and manages "scope-creep". Used with Workflows can ensure that no project work can be executed that is not in the SOW unless there is a Change Order.

What is it: Share and collaborate all projects documents with version control, audit trails, pre-built review and approval processes as well as extensive search functionality. Tag Documents with meta-data for easy search and retrieval at a later date.

Why do I need it: A central repository for all documentation fully integrated with other functionality in CCP.

What is it: The CCP Issues log is fully integrated into all aspects of the project and not an isolated single spreadsheet. Issues are presented on the assigned to team participants portal page, color coded for importance using conditional formatting.

Why do I need it: Allow multi-user simultaneous access to the log, updates status real-time and allow the project manager to see exact status of all issues without having to ask anyone.

What is it: Every project has many tasks that need to be completed. A challenge arises as the Project Manager (PM) needs to work on the underlying data to compute cost and schedule to the metrics like the baseline. Updating the remaining hours (cost) and days (schedule) often requires numerous hours of PM effort. With Ascendive all that data is real time and can be synchronized with MS Project Plan to create an accurate critical path and estimate to complete.

Why do I need it: No more double entry. Use MS Project Plan to manage the project schedule and critical path. Use CCP to have project contributors update their tasks and then your Project Plan is up to date.

What is it: Allows users to assign time at a very granular level (Activity, Issue, Incident, Test, etc.). CCP will separate expenses from capital expenditures.

Why do I need it: Can be used by consultants and employees to accurately track hours. Makes annual audit from Financial Auditors easier. Accurately allocate costs to capital or expense accounts.

What is it: Capture all project expenses, from equipment, licenses, travel and entertainment, both consultants and employees. CCP allows for expenses to be associated with categories that have been defined as Expense or Capitol for easier client reporting compliance.

Why do I need it: Monitor and manage project expenses. Allows you to capture both consultant's and client employee's expenses all in one location.