EVM Calculator
Budget, planned and actual in; SPI, CPI and EAC out, each with a plain-English verdict.
Your four numbers
The approved total budget for the whole scope.
Budgeted cost of the work that should have been finished by now.
Budgeted cost of the work actually finished. Percent complete x BAC is the usual shortcut.
What has genuinely been spent to date.
Verdict
Behind schedule and over budget — both indices are below one.
What each number means
- Cost variance (CV)-$25,000
The work done so far cost 25,000 more than budgeted for it.
- Schedule variance (SV)-$30,000
You are 30,000 of work short of where the plan says you should be.
- Cost performance index (CPI)0.88
Every unit spent is returning only 0.88 units of budgeted work. At this rate the project overruns.
- Schedule performance index (SPI)0.86
Work is being completed at 0.86 times the planned rate — roughly 14% slower than planned.
- Estimate at completion (EAC)$565,611
If cost performance holds, the project finishes over budget by 65,610.86.
- Variance at completion (VAC)-$65,611
Forecast to exceed the approved budget by 65,610.86.
- To-complete performance index (TCPI)1.09
The remaining work has to be delivered at 1.09 times the budgeted efficiency to still hit the budget.
Three ways to forecast the final cost
They disagree on purpose. Pick the assumption you can defend to your sponsor.
- Current performance continues
- BAC / CPI
- $565,611
- Remaining work runs to budget
- AC + (BAC - EV)
- $525,000
- Cost and schedule pressure both continue
- AC + (BAC - EV) / (CPI x SPI)
- $620,878
How it works
- 1Enter four figures: the total approved budget, the value of work planned by now, the value of work actually earned, and what you have really spent.
- 2Earned value is normally percent complete multiplied by the budget at completion.
- 3Every index is shown with what it means in words, so the figures can go straight into a report.
- 4Three forecasts of the final cost are shown side by side — they disagree because they assume different things about the rest of the project.
Common questions
- What is the difference between planned value and earned value?
- Planned value is what the schedule said you would have finished by now, priced at budget. Earned value is what you have actually finished, priced at the same budget. Comparing them tells you whether you are ahead or behind, in money rather than in days.
- Why is schedule variance measured in currency?
- Because earned value compares budgets, not dates. A negative schedule variance means a certain value of budgeted work has not been done yet. It does not directly tell you how many weeks late you are — for that you need the schedule itself.
- Which EAC should I use?
- If the overspend comes from something systemic, like a rate that was wrong from the start, use BAC divided by CPI. If it came from a one-off event that is now behind you, use AC plus the remaining budget. The combined formula is the most pessimistic and is worth showing when the schedule is also slipping.
- My TCPI is above 1.1. Is that recoverable?
- Rarely. TCPI is the efficiency the remaining work has to run at to still hit the original budget. A team that has been running at 0.9 does not usually jump to 1.15. If TCPI is well above CPI, the honest move is to re-baseline the budget rather than promise a recovery.
- Is anything sent to a server?
- No. The calculation runs entirely in your browser and nothing is stored.
Want these figures calculated from the plan itself?
PlanView reads cost data alongside the schedule and works out the earned value indices for every version, so you can see the trend rather than one snapshot.
Build a status reportRelated tools
Status Report Generator
Fill a short form and get a formatted weekly status report plus a matching email draft.
Schedule Health Check
Run the DCMA 14-point assessment on a plan and get a plain-English pass or fail for each check.
Percentage Calculator
X% of Y, what percent one number is of another, and the percentage change between two values.