Follow the money.
It leads to people.
Project accounting tracks, budgets, and reports the financial progress of projects — and because employees and consultants dominate total project cost, it is inseparable from resource management. Plan the people credibly and the cost picture follows.
The funded plan costs $156.9M against a $160.0M envelope — $3.1M of headroom. Add contingency to see when the plan breaches it.
The $160.0M envelope and contingency levels are illustrative module assumptions; program figures come from the shared example portfolio.
Move one cost assumption and watch the funded plan cross the approved envelope.
A system to track, budget, and report the financial progress of projects — scoped to each project's lifecycle and milestones, unlike financial accounting which follows the organization's fiscal calendar.
Project accounting vs. financial accounting
Both revolve around finances, but project accounting is scoped to initiatives: it runs within the project lifecycle rather than the fiscal calendar, measures against deliverables and stage gates rather than quarterly closes, and aligns expenditures with milestones to track budget progress. Financial accounting rolls the organization up; project accounting tells you whether this investment is performing.
Why it works with resource management
For most project-based organizations the #1 internal cost is labor. Managers want to know what each initiative costs, which cost centers are charged, and whether costs track the original budget. When resource forecasting is linked with project accounting, labor cost is calculated in real time — add non-labor resources and you have total project cost, live.
Time tracking closes the loop: actuals against budget and forecast audit the whole planning process, showing how well the organization actually plans.
What better financial visibility buys
Data-driven decisions — real-time financial insight refines resource distribution and pinpoints cost reductions. Profitability comparison — costs and benefits compared across projects improve funding decisions, and high performers become estimating benchmarks. Customer trust — transparent financial metrics and accurate revenue forecasts surface problems early, before they surface themselves.
Labor dominates project cost. PDWare links resource forecasting with project accounting — real-time labor cost, cost centers, and budget variance across the portfolio.
Common questions
What is project accounting?
How does PDWare calculate project cost?
Connect portfolio decisions to financial impact.
See labor cost, cost centers, and budget variance in the same model as staffing.
More capabilities: Resource capacity planning · Strategic resource allocation · Agile resource planning · Scenario & what-if planning · Portfolio Waterline · The PMO & resource management