Measure and adjust

Plan vs. Actual Comparison
in projects

Set planned values against actual ones at a defined cut-off date – per task, work package and project. And answer the question that really matters: when will we finish on this trajectory, and which other projects does that hit?

Linetrack software for plan vs. actual comparison, project monitoring and forecasting in industrial projects

In short

A plan vs. actual comparison sets planned project values against actual ones at a cut-off date: dates, effort and progress. Linetrack runs that comparison continuously per task and work package – progress from task tracking, actual hours imported from time tracking – and carries the deviation forward as a forecast across every project. In use at Schnaithmann Maschinenbau and LANG Technik.

50%

customers with an interface
import actual hours

56%

customers had a live connection
within the first 6 months

1512

projects managed
in parallel

100%

named a lack of transparency
as their starting problem

*Every figure on this page comes from a full survey of all live Linetrack implementations, as of August 2026. Customers could name more than one starting problem.

Challenges

Why the plan vs. actual comparison usually arrives too late

100% of Linetrack customers named a lack of transparency as their starting problem, 91% Excel and tool chaos, 59% manual status chasing. Multiple answers were possible. In plan vs. actual work these patterns bite hardest – here are four of them.

The comparison only happens at reporting time

Plan and actual figures are pulled together when the monthly report is due. By then the deviation is four weeks old and the task in question is finished. What remains is an explanation, not a correction.

Planned hours and actual hours live apart

Planned values sit in the project plan, actual hours in time tracking, dates in a third list. 91% of customers named exactly this Excel and tool chaos as their starting problem. The comparison is then assembled by copy and paste – and is outdated again by the next booking day.

Progress is estimated, not reported

Without feedback at task level, percentage complete is an opinion. The classic case: a work package sits just short of done for weeks. Hours consumed and actual progress can no longer be checked against each other.

The deviation is documented, never extrapolated

The comparison shows a task took considerably more hours than planned. What that means for the delivery date and for the projects running in parallel is written down nowhere. 100% of customers named the missing portfolio view as their starting problem.

Definition

What is a plan vs. actual comparison in a project?

A plan vs. actual comparison in a project sets planned values against actual ones at a defined cut-off date – dates, effort and progress, per task, work package and project as a whole. The difference between the two series is the deviation. Its purpose is early warning rather than documentation: deviations should surface while the course can still be corrected.

That makes it the measuring step in the closed loop of project planning and control: the plan provides the yardstick, the feedback provides the actual value, the assessment provides the decision. Take any one of the three away and you no longer have a comparison, only a row of numbers with no consequence.

An honest boundary

A plan vs. actual comparison is only as good as its actual data

The planned value is the easy half – it is in the plan. The actual value is the real hurdle. Progress and date status come from feedback inside the system, actual hours come from time tracking, purchase orders and invoices from the ERP. Each of those sources has to be connected, otherwise the comparison stays incomplete.

Concretely: 56% of Linetrack customers had a live connection running within their first six months. Of those, 50% use it to import actual hours for precisely this purpose, and 39% connected their ERP. Without connected time tracking, the effort comparison remains an estimate. Which systems are connected how is covered under integrations.

Linetrack does not record working time itself and is not an ERP system. That is deliberate: project control that brings its own time tracking competes with the system HR and the works council already run – and normally loses that contest. Linetrack reads the actual values instead of collecting them a second time.

So if there is no interface yet, the sensible start is dates and progress: those metrics come from feedback inside the system and work without any integration at all. The hours comparison follows once time tracking is connected. A comparison built on half the data is more honest than one that invents actual hours from estimates.

56%

of customers had a live connection running within six months

50%

of those import actual hours for precisely this purpose

From hindsight to forecast

A plan vs. actual comparison looks backwards – the value comes from the forecast

A plan vs. actual comparison answers a question about the past: what was planned, and what happened? That is necessary, but it does not steer anything yet. The steering question is a different one: when will we finish on this trajectory – and which other projects does that hit?

That is why Linetrack carries the measured deviation forward. Hours consumed and reported progress produce a remaining effort, that effort is set against the department's remaining capacity, and the result is a new completion date. Because the same departments work across several projects, the shift becomes visible immediately in multi-project management – as a spike in the affected department's capacity histogram, not as a footnote in one project report.

Scenario planning and capacity management with plan vs. actual comparison and forecast in Linetrack

The project manager then simulates the alternatives: extend the task, shift capacity, cut scope or outsource. Only the decision that is actually taken goes back into the plan – and becomes the new baseline for the next round. How dates and capacity come together natively is described under scheduling and capacity planning in one system.

Where the actuals come from

Feedback instead of status chasing

The actual status is created where the work happens. Employees report their tasks back through task tracking – design engineers on the desktop, fitters and field technicians on the mobile app. Progress is therefore not a collected figure from the weekly round, but a continuous data stream at task level.

59% of customers named manual status chasing as one of their starting problems, multiple answers possible – meaning the round of phone calls to every department before each meeting. Feedback in task management replaces exactly that step: the project manager does not ask for the status, they read it. The meeting then starts at the decision, not at data collection.

Task management dashboard with progress feedback feeding the plan vs. actual comparison

How far a task has drifted from the plan is visible directly in the bar chart; how tasks, dependencies and milestones are represented is covered on the page about the Gantt chart. For assessing deviations, one simple rule has proven itself in practice: a deviation that touches a milestone or a downstream task is decided immediately. Everything else is watched until the trend points the same way across two cut-off dates – only then is it reliable.

Metrics

Which metrics a plan vs. actual comparison delivers

A robust plan vs. actual comparison is not a single number but a set of metrics that answer different questions – and that come from different sources. The third column is the decisive one: it names the system that has to deliver the actual value before the metric exists at all.

Metric	What it shows	Where the actual data comes from
Schedule adherence	Deviation between planned and actual finish per task and milestone, in days.	Feedback in the system – start and finish reports on tasks.
Percentage complete	How much of a work package is done, measured against the planned status at the cut-off date.	Feedback in the system via task tracking, per task.
Effort in hours	Planned hours against actual hours per task – the metric that links costing and post-calculation.	Import from time tracking; without an interface only an estimate.
Capacity utilization	Scheduled against actually worked hours per department – shows structural overload rather than isolated cases.	Time tracking, plus absences from time tracking or HR.
Milestone trend	How a milestone moves across several cut-off dates – the earliest reliable warning of schedule slippage.	Derived from the date history in the system, no external source needed.
Purchase and outsourced cost	Whether promised delivery dates and outsourced work still match the current project status.	ERP integration – in use at 39% of customers with an interface.

Three of these six metrics – schedule adherence, percentage complete and milestone trend – come purely from data the project system produces itself. Effort, capacity utilization and outsourced cost depend on an interface. Starting without one gives you three reliable metrics and three estimates. That is a workable start – it just has to be called what it is.

Case Study

From recalculating to a running comparison

Before Linetrack, the plan vs. actual comparison was produced after the fact: planned hours from the project plan, actual hours from time tracking, merged into a spreadsheet whenever someone asked. Today the plan, the feedback and the actual hours run on one data foundation – the deviation sits in the same view as the plan, and the forecast carries it forward across every project.

„With Linetrack, we've eliminated countless opaque plans."

Niklas Reitinger

Head of Project Management

Schnaithmann Maschinenbau GmbH

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Still have questions?

Book a meeting with our team.

What is a plan vs. actual comparison in a project?

A plan vs. actual comparison sets planned project values against actual ones at a cut-off date: dates, effort and progress, per task and work package. The difference is the deviation. Its purpose is early warning, not documentation – it should show where the course departs from the plan while there is still something to be done about it.

Which metrics belong in a plan vs. actual comparison?

In practice five to six: schedule adherence, percentage complete, effort in hours, capacity utilization, milestone trend and, if the ERP is connected, purchase and outsourced cost. Schedule adherence, percentage complete and milestone trend come from data the project system produces itself. The hours and capacity comparison needs connected time tracking, otherwise it remains an estimate.

Where does the actual data for a plan vs. actual comparison come from?

From three sources: progress and date reports from feedback inside the system, actual hours imported from time tracking, purchase and invoice status from the ERP. At Linetrack, 56% of customers had a live connection running within their first six months. Of those, 50% use it to import actual hours for the comparison, and 39% connected their ERP.

What is the difference between a plan vs. actual comparison and a forecast?

The comparison looks backwards: it measures what was planned up to the cut-off date and what actually happened. The forecast carries that result forward and answers the steering question: when will the project finish on this trajectory, and which other projects does the shift hit? Without a forecast, the comparison stays an assessment of the past.

How often should a plan vs. actual comparison be run?

As often as decisions are made. A weekly cadence works well, and a daily one during assembly and commissioning phases. What matters is not the cadence but that feedback and actual hours keep coming in. A comparison that is only produced for the monthly report regularly arrives too late for the task concerned.

Which software is suitable for project monitoring and plan vs. actual comparison?

Software that keeps the plan and the feedback on the same data foundation and imports actual hours through an interface – not a pure scheduling tool and not a separate reporting spreadsheet. The cross-project view matters just as much, because the same departments work on several projects. The full loop is described under project planning and control. Linetrack starts at 10 € per user per month, licensed modularly by user count, roles and the modules booked.

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