User guides

Cost Estimator guide

Work out a project's people cost: who is needed, for how much of their time, and for how many days. You need an account and access to the Cost Estimator. If you don't have it yet, press Request access next to it under Your access on Your account, and you'll get an email when the administrator decides.

1Describe the project

Open Menu, then Apps, and choose Cost Estimator. Type the Project name; that's the only box you must fill in. You can also add a description and links to the project's Jira and Confluence pages (they must start with https://).

2Add the resources

Press Add resource for each person or role the project needs. In each row:

Each row's Cost is the day rate × FTE × working days, so 10 days of a Lead developer at 0.5 FTE costs £262 × 0.5 × 10 = £1,310.00. Each row is rounded to the nearest penny. Total estimated cost adds up every row. Delete on a row removes it straight away.

Not sure how much support the developers need? Add your Lead developer and Senior developer rows first, then under Suggest supporting roles press Low-end, Mid-range or Upper-end. EstimateIt adds QA, BA, Project manager, Compliance, Marketing and Sales/FRM rows sized from your developer days, using common rules of thumb. Open How the suggestions are worked out to see the ranges behind each option. Pressing another option replaces the rows the last one added, and any row you change becomes yours. The ratios shift a lot with project size and type, and small projects carry relatively more PM and BA overhead, so treat the suggestion as a starting point.

The Resources section with Lead developer and Senior developer rows and six supporting roles added by Mid-range, each with its day rate, FTE, working days and cost, and a total estimated cost of £24,945.00
Add your developers, then press Mid-range to add the supporting roles. Each row shows its cost and the total is at the bottom.

3Save, open and delete estimates

Press Save estimate. It appears under Your project estimates, newest first, where Open brings it back to change and save again. To delete a project, press its Delete button twice. New estimate starts an empty one; if you have changes that aren't saved, press it twice.

Your project estimates, listing Customer invoice portal, when it was last saved and its total, with Open and Delete buttons
Saved estimates are listed under Your project estimates.

4Share or print an estimate

Under Share this estimate, Copy summary copies the estimate as text you can paste into an email, Teams or Jira: the project, each resource with its sum, the total, and whether it's saved. Copy as CSV copies the resources as a table you can paste into Excel or another spreadsheet. Print prints the project and resources without the buttons, or saves them as a PDF if you pick that as the printer. All three use the estimate as it is on screen, saved or not. If your browser doesn't allow copying, the text appears in a box for you to select and copy yourself.

5Good to know

Glossary

The words used in the Cost Estimator, A to Z.

Copy summary, Copy as CSV and Print
Ways to share an estimate: as text for an email, Teams or Jira, as a table for a spreadsheet, or on paper or as a PDF.
Cost
What one row costs: the day rate × FTE × working days, rounded to the nearest penny.
Day rate
What one day of a role costs. Each role has its own; a saved estimate keeps the rates it was first saved with.
Estimate
One project's name, details and resource rows, saved under Your project estimates. Only you can see your estimates.
FTE
Full time equivalent: how much of a person's time goes on the project, from 0.01 to 1.00. 1.00 is full time and 0.5 is half their time.
Grade
The pay grade shown after each role, such as G6 or G7, which sets its day rate.
Low-end, Mid-range and Upper-end
The three options under Suggest supporting roles. Each adds QA, BA, Project manager, Compliance, Marketing and Sales/FRM rows sized from your developer days, using smaller or larger rules of thumb.
Request access
The button on Your account that asks the administrator to let you use the Cost Estimator.
Resource
One row of an estimate: a role, its FTE and its working days.
Role
The kind of person a row is for, such as Lead developer (G7) or QA (G6).
Total estimated cost
The cost of every row added together.
Working days
How many days of that role the project needs, in whole or half days.

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