One of my primary clients was purchased.
The new owners want to use task worker time tracking and estimating to build out project forecasting dashboards.
I haven’t found anything to satisfy both a great collaboration environment + financial forecasting.
Any tips out there?
Having been a CFO for 33 years I am betting this is going to be a challenge. Some project management software has basic cost accumulation features to it, but it really is not a dynamic situation, usually simple manual inputs. The key in my mind is prioritizing excellence across the three components. We know Asana can handle the work flow and task management, integrated into Asana is Harvest and at least a couple more that work very well for time tracking but the detailed project financial forecast is most likely going to have to be google sheets, Excel or hyperlinks to one of the storage options of dropbox, box, or google drive. All three will have versioning to keep the process dynamic. In addition the ability to forward the creation of tasks with attachments through email that can be dragged into subtasks with good names is always helpful. You might look at Asana integrations, Asana Apps and Integrations • Asana as it seems some use Everhour successfully for time tracking versus time and billing.
Hi Adam, are you familiar with custom fields? A very basic solution would be to create fields for estimating hours and logging time spent that you can update right there in the task pane. However you can’t really create dashboards from these fields. You’d have to look at other options like @James_Carl suggests. You could use saved searches to search for tasks based on specific estimates.
Please let me know if you have any more questions. If you’re interested in improving your use of Asana further or want to discuss team training, please feel free to book a free 30-minute introductory call with me to discuss consulting options.
Thanks for the helpful comments!
It sounds like we will try for Asana Dashboard Sheet Export + Harvest + Harvest: Forecast.
[Add up Numbers in Brackets] option (From [My Profile Settings] > {Hacks]) used to be a good way to simply sum up numbers in the task titles, but it seems to have disappeared quietly. Sorry to see it go 
How’s this integration combo working for your company?
Unfortunately Asana got rid of the dashboard export to google sheets.
I still use Harvest to track time, love it.
I thought Harvest Forecast was pretty cool! The new Asana workload stuff is similar and looks pretty good (Asana Workload - Manage Team Capacity and Rebalance Work • Asana).
I’m not currently on any workload scheduling and forecasting projects, so, I’ve been out of the loop for a while.