How MS Project uses cost management terms?

• Forecast: The projected cost for all past, current and future tasks. In other words: the predicted cost for the project.
• Actual: The costs that have already been made, or for which the obligation to pay is already made
• Remaining: All costs that are still to be incurred, as these are related to tasks that still need to be done
• Budgeted costs: The amount of money you are allowed to spend due to agreements made with your client, boss or stakeholders. There could be an agreed tolerance level for deviating 10% from this budget. This tolerance should then be well-documented of course.
• Baseline costs: At the point of accepting the project a baseline is set, which is a copy of the schedule that adheres to the time, budget and scope constraints for the project. Baseline costs therefore reflect the ‘forecasted’ costs at that time.

This also means that the actual and forecasted costs can be compared to the budget as well as to the baseline costs. In our e-course Cost Management we will discuss both comparisons. Which terms about cost management did you miss in this list?