Cost Commitment / PO Tracker vs Budget

The problem this kills

Your budget report says you have $80,000 left on the project. You feel fine. Then three open purchase orders and a signed contractor agreement all land as invoices in the same week, and suddenly you're $22,000 over. Nothing went wrong with the work - the money was already promised. Your report just never showed the commitments.

That's the gap between actual spend (invoices received) and committed cost (money you've already pledged on open POs and signed agreements). Most spreadsheets only track what's been invoiced, so "remaining budget" is a comforting fiction until the bills catch up. Project managers find out they're over budget after it's too late to do anything about it.

This plan kills that blind spot. It builds a tool where remaining budget = budget − spent − open commitments, so the number on the screen is the number you can actually still spend.

What you'll build

A small, private web app for your project team and controllers that:

• Imports three things - your budget per project, your open commitments / POs, and your actual spend - from CSV or a Google Sheet (no integration with your ERP required to start).
• Computes the real picture per project and per budget line: Committed, Spent, and True Remaining (budget minus spent minus open commitments).
• Avoids double-counting. When a PO gets invoiced, it matches the actual back to the commitment so the same money isn't subtracted twice.
• Flags danger early. Any new commitment that would push a line over its remaining budget is highlighted before it's approved.
• Gates every commitment. New commitments and any budget impact are drafted, then a controller reviews and approves them before they're recorded against the project.
• Exports a clean budget view as CSV in the exact columns your finance team or system expects.

What's inside the Implementation Plan

• It starts by interviewing you about your business. Before writing a single line of code, the plan has the AI agent ask you about your real process - how your budgets are structured, what a "commitment" means in your shop, how your POs and cost codes are named, your typical and peak volumes, and your approval rules. It reflects a short tailored spec back to you for a thumbs-up, then shapes the data model and every later step around your answers. You get a tool fitted to your business, not a generic template.
• A clear definition of done so you know exactly when you're finished.
• Step-by-step build instructions, each ending with a ready-to-paste prompt for your AI coding agent.
• The PO-to-actual matching logic that prevents double-counting, written in plain language.
• The over-budget flagging and the controller approval workflow.
• A simple architecture diagram so you can see how the pieces fit.
• A verification checklist and the CSV-export fallback so the tool is fully usable today.

The governance it includes (this is the point)

This isn't a toy spreadsheet replacement - it's built like a tool finance can trust:

• Login so only your team can open it.
• Row-level security so each organization (and, if you want, each project) only ever sees its own data.
• A complete audit trail - who imported what, who approved which commitment, and exactly when.
• A human-in-the-loop approval gate - the AI drafts new commitments and their budget impact; a controller reviews and approves; only then is anything recorded against the project.
• Duplicate guards so the same PO or commitment ID can't be processed twice, and an invoiced PO can't be double-counted as both a commitment and an actual.

Who it's for

Project managers who keep getting surprised by "committed but not yet invoiced" costs. Project controllers and cost engineers who need a defensible remaining-budget number. Procurement-aware PMO leads who want commitments visible the moment a PO is raised - not a month later when the invoice shows up. If you live in budget spreadsheets and you're tired of finding out about overruns after the fact, this is for you.

You've got this - paste the first prompt and let the agent interview you.