You split the fee across phases when you wrote the proposal, and nobody looks at that split again until an invoice shows Construction Documents (CD) running hot. By then the drawing set has already outrun the hours.
A phase budget that lives only in the proposal can’t warn you while there’s still time to act. You’ll leave with a copyable template that splits your design fee across Schematic Design (SD), Design Development (DD), CD and Construction Administration (CA), plus the formulas to compare budget to actuals every week, so you can correct course while each phase is still open.
Build a Project Budget Template in Seven Steps
Map the agreed scope to phases, build labor and pass-through line items, then freeze the baseline. Add budgeted, actual and variance columns so you can track spending against progress every week.
Step 1: Map the budget to phases
A phase map assigns every dollar of fee to the phase where the work happens. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) B101-2017 owner-architect agreement organizes basic services into five traditional phases: Schematic Design, Design Development, Construction Documents, Procurement and Construction. Its § 11.5 leaves the phase percentages blank in the form, so you negotiate the split.
Published splits vary. Consultant Paul Nakazawa told Architect Magazine that 15/20/35/5/25 is the standard AIA split, while Washington State’s public-works guidelines use 18/20/31/2/27 plus 2% for closeout. Fold Procurement into CD or CA when it carries only a few points, as the worked example does with CA.
Step 2: Set up columns and cost categories
Cost categories are the line types under each phase. Order them the way the fee gets consumed:
- Labor, as hours times rate
- Consultants
- Reimbursables
- Overhead
- Contingency
Copy this blank template into your spreadsheet, with columns A through M running left to right:
Step 6 fills columns E through J, and the earned value section fills cost variance (CV), cost performance index (CPI) and estimate at completion (EAC). AIA’s B101 instructions say hourly billing rates should carry salary, benefits, overhead and profit. If you budget at billing rates, overhead already sits inside labor and its line stays at zero. If you budget at direct salary cost, give overhead its own line at your firm’s rate.
Step 3: Enter labor by phase
A labor budget is planned hours per role multiplied by that role’s billable rate, summed by phase. Build it from the deliverables up, then check it against the phase allocation. The DD plan for the example project reads:
- Principal: 30 hours at $250 equals $7,500.
- Project manager: 90 hours at $180 equals $16,200.
- Project architect: 130 hours at $150 equals $19,500.
- Designer: 100 hours at $128 equals $12,800.
That’s 350 hours and $56,000, a blended $160 per hour. Have the staffing conversation before kickoff if the role-level total overshoots the phase allocation. Engineering firms build the same plan from roles such as principal engineer, project engineer, mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) designer, structural designer and computer-aided design (CAD) technician, at their own billing rates.
Step 4: Add consultant fees and reimbursables
Consultant and reimbursable lines hold pass-through money, so keep them apart from labor.
- Consultants: The B101 form counts usual and customary structural, mechanical and electrical engineering as part of Basic Services, so check whether your agreement includes their fees. Budget each structural and MEP consultant by phase from their proposal, with the heaviest share in DD, where AIA has the MEP and structural details laid out.
- Reimbursables: Section 11.8.1 treats these as additional to compensation, and § 11.8.2 leaves the markup percentage blank, so read your executed contract before adding markup. Track them below the fee total, since they bill on top.
If you run a structural or MEP firm, your labor lines are the prime architect’s consultant lines. Mirror its phase names and percentages so your invoices reconcile with its billing.
Step 5: Add contingency and freeze the cost baseline
Contingency is fee held for known risks like client iterations, consultant coordination or a long phase. AIA’s fee guidance suggests 10% of planned hours as a starting point, enough for 2 to 4% variances per phase. It treats a special-situations contingency of about 3% of fee as a separate item. Give contingency its own line so no phase quietly absorbs it.
The Project Management Institute (PMI) defines the cost baseline as the approved, time-phased budget that changes only through formal change control and serves as the comparison point for actuals. Copy the approved Budget column to a locked Baseline tab the day the client signs.
Step 6: Build budgeted, actual and variance columns
These formulas assume your first line item sits in row 5 and work the same in Excel and Google Sheets.
For % complete, keep a Deliverables tab with the line item in column A, the deliverable in column B and its status in column C, so the formula applies Exceljet’s completed-task ratio to each line. IFERROR hides every error, so confirm each formula works before you wrap it.
Step 7: Track actuals against the baseline weekly
Weekly tracking means loading actuals from approved timesheets and consultant bills, then reading % spent against % complete for every open phase. Zweig Group recommends a weekly job cost review, and a Zweig Letter profitability column sets intervention points at 30%, 60% and 90% of fee burn.
When % spent outruns % complete, act that week:
- Reassign staff when one role, such as the architect or engineer, carries the overrun.
- Tighten scope when drawing or calculation counts grow.
- Open a change request when the client added work.
Record the decision in the sheet, and log change requests through the change-control steps below so the baseline moves only with approval.
A Fixed-Fee Example Shows CD Spend Outrunning Progress
Your firm holds a $300,000 stipulated sum covering its own services plus structural and MEP consultants, with a $6,000 reimbursable allowance billed on top. Rates are your firm’s billing rates, so overhead is included. CD labor runs a lower $150 blended rate because it leans on project architect and designer hours. SD and DD are closed and CD is underway. The week 22 snapshot reads:
The four SD and DD variance cells total a calculated $7,800 over budget. CD shows $36,000 left on the variance column, but the team has spent 60% of the CD labor budget to finish 50% of the work. Dividing the $21,000 contingency by total labor dollars gives 9%, close to AIA’s 10%-of-planned-hours starting point, though dollars and hours aren’t the same measure. The rates belong to this firm and aren’t benchmarks, CD’s % complete depends on a deliverable count the project manager has to confirm, and the sheet has no schedule showing when CA starts or who will staff it.
Earned Value Metrics Show Whether Spend Matches Progress
Earned value (EV) for CD labor is $90,000 times 50%, or $45,000, and actual cost (AC) is $54,000. PMI’s formulas give cost variance as EV minus AC, here -$9,000. CPI is EV divided by AC, here 0.83. A CPI of 0.83 means every dollar of CD fee spent has earned 83 cents of planned work, which is how PMI reads the cost performance index.
Estimate at completion (EAC) is budget divided by CPI, PMI’s cost forecast formula, assuming current performance continues. Here EAC is a calculated $108,000. Subtracting the $90,000 budget gives a calculated CD labor overrun of $18,000. Adding the $7,800 lost in SD and DD gives a calculated forecast overrun of $25,800 against a $21,000 contingency. Fill Step 2’s columns: K5 =J5-F5, L5 =IFERROR(J5/F5,0), M5 =IFERROR(E5/L5,0).
Don’t count on the CPI recovering by itself; it improves only when you change how the remaining work is staffed or scoped. A PMI risk article uses 0.75 as an illustrative warning threshold, so set yours from your firm’s project history. The earned value guide goes further.
Change Control Keeps the Approved Budget Accurate
Scope added after signing enters the budget as a new, approved line. B101-2017 defines Additional Services as services that arise mid-project, and § 4.2.1 requires you to notify the owner promptly and await written authorization. A Zweig Letter column on scope creep adds a project change log and a change order form covering cost, time and description. Run every change through five steps:
- Log the date, requester and phase it touches.
- Price it in hours and dollars at the Step 3 rates.
- Send the owner the cost and schedule impact.
- Get written authorization before anyone charges time to it. During construction, § 4.2.2 lets you proceed on its listed services and notify the owner, to avoid delay.
- Add an Additional Services line, then move the approved amount into the baseline.
Keep the original baseline tab untouched beside the updated one, so you can still report against the signed fee when the owner asks how the project grew.
Template Structure Changes by Billing Model
The Budget column means something different under each billing model:
- Fixed fee: Budget caps each phase, and % spent against % complete is your profit signal.
- Time and materials (T&M): AIA advises invoicing hourly work within not-to-exceed limits, a cap you won’t pass without the owner’s approval. Ask for that approval before variance reaches zero.
- Retainer: AIA suggests a retainer that covers services until the first invoice is paid. Add a Retainer row that tracks the balance held.
The phase rows, formulas and weekly review stay the same under all three models. Set the Budget column’s meaning when you build the sheet, so the team reads variance the same way all project long.
Track Every Phase Budget Against Progress in Monograph
A spreadsheet works for one project. Eight live projects mean eight sheets to reconcile every week, and the one that slips is the one you discover after the invoice goes out. Collections lag too, reaching only 25% of fee by the end of DD in Zweig Group’s 2025 fee collection data. The check that matters is the same on every open phase: % spent against % complete, then invoiced against collected.
Monograph is firm management software built for A&E firms of 5 to 100 people. You set each phase budget as a fixed dollar amount or a percentage of fee, and the hours your team logs against a phase update its burn as they’re entered. Monograph’s MoneyGantt™ places each phase on a Gantt-style timeline and shows that phase’s fee moving from planned to logged to invoiced to paid, so schedule and money read together.
Phase budgets and billing progress carry straight into phase-based invoicing, and invoices, bills, expenses, clients and consultants sync both ways with QuickBooks Online, so billing doesn’t get re-keyed. Dynamic Engineering, a 10-person structural engineering firm in Florida, moved off Excel and reports 25% profit growth after better time tracking caught the site-visit hours that used to go unnoticed.
See your phase budgets, logged hours and billing progress on one screen, so a CD overrun shows up while the phase is still open. Book a demo.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much contingency should I add to a project budget?
Start with the 10% of planned hours from Step 5. Contingency reserve sits inside the cost baseline for identified risks, and the project manager spends it. Management reserve sits outside the baseline for emergencies, and drawing on it usually takes approval from management or the project sponsor.
What is the difference between a cost baseline and the project budget?
The baseline is the frozen, approved number you measure actuals against. PMI’s definition adds management reserve to the cost baseline to produce the project budget. Weekly variance runs against the baseline, while a fresh estimate of the remaining work goes into the EAC column.
What formulas calculate variance and percent spent in a spreadsheet?
Variance is =E5-F5 and percent spent is =IFERROR(F5/E5,0), with E as budget and F as actual. Use =IF(E5=0,"",F5/E5) instead when you want only the zero-budget rows blanked, so other errors still show. Excel multiplies existing numbers by 100 when you apply percentage formatting, so enter the formula before you format the cell.
How do I break a budget down by work breakdown structure?
Make phases the top level of your work breakdown structure (WBS), tasks second. AIA describes a phase-based WBS with hours or dollars per task summing to the net fee. Follow PMI’s 100% rule: each phase’s tasks must total its full scope. Multidiscipline engineering firms can add a discipline level, such as structural, mechanical, electrical or plumbing, between phase and task.
When should a firm move from a spreadsheet to firm management software?
Move once the weekly review stops happening on schedule. That usually shows up as several concurrent projects, overruns that surface after month-end instead of during the phase, someone matching timesheets to phase budgets by hand, or consultant bills that sit in email and never reach the sheet.
