At Planyard, we’re always working to make construction cost control simpler, faster, and more insightful for our users. This month, we’ve rolled out a significant set of updates that enhance how teams handle cashflows, forecast profitability, and stay on top of project changes—without returning to spreadsheets.
Let’s explore what’s new.
Introducing Budget Timelines (Advanced CVRs)
Understanding how your project budget changes over time is essential—but traditional tools rarely offer that visibility. That’s where Planyard’s new Budget Timeline (Cost Value Reconciliation) comes in. It gives you a clear, month-by-month breakdown of how and why your budgets evolve.
Why it matters
- Spot changes instantly: Color-coded views highlight increases, decreases, and stable lines.
- Trace budget shifts: Click directly into any line to see what caused the change—whether it’s a revised PO, subcontract, or internal adjustment.
- Shareable views: Each timeline can be shared via URL, making collaboration with stakeholders simple.
This empowers project managers, quantity surveyors, and CFOs to:
- Back up financial decisions with clear data.
- Identify and fix scope creep or outdated estimates.
- Make more accurate, future-proof forecasts.
And with Portfolio-Level CVRs, you now have a consolidated view across all active projects—ideal for financial managers looking for company-wide insight.
Enhanced Retainage Management for Contracts
Retainage workflows have received a powerful upgrade, making it easier to manage settlements across both client and subcontractor contracts. Highlights are as follows:
- Retainage can now be settled directly from payment applications, with validations in place to ensure accuracy.
- New tables help track previously settled retainage, remaining balances, and auto-calculated warranty percentages.
- Retainage-related values now appear in PDF exports and invoice mapping views—keeping accounting aligned with actual site progress.
Estimation & Material Database Improvements
Whether you’re pricing a new job or managing ongoing projects, accurate and flexible estimates are the foundation of financial success.
This month, we’ve made Planyard’s estimation and material database tools even more powerful and user-friendly—especially for teams working with detailed material breakdowns or complex bid structures.
What’s new
- Material Pivot Tables simplify mass updates on material heavy bids, saving time on repetitive edits.
- Material Database Sync lets you use the latest prices and update the database directly from your estimate.
- Smarter Budget Codes act like templates, making budgeting faster and more consistent.
- Bulk Deletion of Categories helps clean up messy uploads in seconds.
The big win
These updates reduce the friction between estimating and live budget tracking. What used to take hours of manual spreadsheet work can now be done in minutes. That means:
- Project teams can easily reuse and adapt data from one job to the next, building a compounding advantage over time.
- Estimators can spend more time refining bids and less time formatting them.
- Financial managers can trust that estimates and budgets are aligned—because they’re built on the same structure.
Smarter Cash Flow Forecasting with Periodic Forecasts
Managing construction cash flow just got easier. We’ve introduced a dedicated Periodic Forecasting feature set to give finance teams a clearer, structured overview of financial health over time.
What’s new:
- Company-Wide Period Settings: You can now define annual cashflow forecast periods in your financial settings. These act as templates across all projects, ensuring consistency in forecasting and reporting.
- Dedicated Forecasting Tab: Projects now have a new “Periodic Forecasts” tab that separates long-term forecasts from monthly operational cash flows, making it easier to distinguish between the two.
- Detailed Forecast Views: See Forecast, Actuals, and Variance side by side for each period. YTD and percentage variances are also included for deeper insight.
With these changes, teams can compare historical data, plan proactively, and create multiple scenario forecasts—without compromising data accuracy.
Discover What’s New in Planyard
These updates are designed to help you work smarter, save time, and maintain better control over your project financials. Whether it’s managing estimates, visualizing portfolio performance, or streamlining workflows, Planyard continues to evolve to meet your needs.
Try the new features today or book a demo to see how Planyard can simplify your construction cost management.