Earned Value Analysis Calculator
A project can spend less than planned and still be in trouble, if the work finished is worth even less than the money spent. Earned value analysis settles that question with one comparison: the budgeted value of the work actually done, set against what was planned and what was spent. This calculator takes your budget at completion, actual cost, planned value and percent complete, and returns earned value, cost variance, schedule variance, CPI and SPI, the five core measures of the PMBOK earned value method.
Quick Answer
For a project with a $100,000 budget at completion that is 70% complete, with planned value of $60,000 and actual cost of $55,000, earned value is $70000.00. Cost variance is $15000.00 and schedule variance is $10000.00, with a CPI of 1.27 and an SPI of 1.17: the project is under budget and ahead of schedule at the status date.
Key takeaways
- Earned value is the budgeted value of work actually finished. This tool builds it from percent complete multiplied by BAC, so you never have to estimate EV separately.
- Variances are money: positive CV means under budget, positive SV means ahead of schedule. Indexes are ratios: above 1 is favourable, below 1 is not.
- CPI is usually the harder signal to reverse. A project that is over budget early rarely drifts back on its own, which is why the GAO and PMI both treat CPI trends as an early warning.
- This calculator reports status, not forecasts. EAC, ETC and VAC are derived from its CPI output by hand, and the section below shows exactly how, with numbers.
- Quick Answer
- How to use the earned value analysis calculator
- The five earned value formulas this calculator uses
- Worked example: 70% complete on a $100,000 project
- Reading CPI and SPI: what each combination means
- Forecasting EAC, ETC and VAC from the CPI on this page
- What competing calculators miss
- Where percent complete can mislead you
- Frequently asked questions
- Add This Calculator to Your Website
How to use the earned value analysis calculator
Take all four inputs from the same status date, then click Calculate. Mixing dates is the most common reason earned value figures look wrong.
- Budget at Completion (BAC): the total approved budget for the whole project. Use the current approved baseline, including any contingency reserve that sits inside it.
- Actual Cost (AC): what the work performed to date has actually cost. Pull it from the same accounting period as your progress report.
- Planned Value (PV): the budgeted value of work scheduled to be done by now, read off the time-phased plan.
- Percent Complete: the share of total scope genuinely finished. Use measured progress (units installed, deliverables accepted), not elapsed time and not money spent divided by budget.
The method itself is standardised: the formulas follow the earned value guidance in the PMBOK Guide published by the Project Management Institute, and formal earned value management systems on large contracts are governed by the ANSI/EIA-748 standard. If you only need the cost ratio on its own, the dedicated cost performance index calculator isolates CPI; this page gives you the full status picture around it.
The five earned value formulas this calculator uses
Three baseline numbers and one derived number produce every output. Earned value is derived first, then each variance and index is a single subtraction or division from it.
CV = EV – AC
SV = EV – PV
CPI = EV / AC
SPI = EV / PV
Older texts call the same three inputs BCWP (budgeted cost of work performed, now EV), BCWS (budgeted cost of work scheduled, now PV) and ACWP (actual cost of work performed, now AC). The Defense Acquisition University overview of earned value management maps the older and newer terms side by side, which helps when a contract report still uses the BCWS vocabulary. One point the formulas make easy to miss: SV is measured in money, not days. A schedule variance of $10000.00 says the work earned is worth that much more than planned; it does not say the project will finish a fixed number of days early.
Worked example: 70% complete on a $100,000 project
A software rollout has an approved budget of $100,000. At the monthly status date the plan said $60,000 of work should be done, the team has actually spent $55,000, and measured progress puts the project at 70% complete. Those are the pre-filled values in the calculator.
| Output | Result | How it is built |
|---|---|---|
| Earned Value (EV) | $70000.00 | 70% x $100,000 BAC |
| Cost Variance (CV) | $15000.00 | $70,000 EV – $55,000 AC |
| Schedule Variance (SV) | $10000.00 | $70,000 EV – $60,000 PV |
| Cost Performance Index (CPI) | 1.27 | $70,000 / $55,000 = 1.2727, shown as 1.27 |
| Schedule Performance Index (SPI) | 1.17 | $70,000 / $60,000 = 1.1667, shown as 1.17 |
The three money figures behind those results, side by side:
Read the bars in order and the story is visible without any ratios: the team earned $70,000 of value, more than the $60,000 planned, and it cost them $55,000 to do it, less than the value earned. Both variances are positive and both indexes sit above 1, so the verdict badge reads on track.
Reading CPI and SPI: what each combination means
An index above 1 is favourable and below 1 is unfavourable, for both CPI and SPI. The four combinations cover every project state, and each one points at a different management response.
| CPI and SPI | Reading | First move |
|---|---|---|
| CPI above 1, SPI above 1 | Under budget and ahead of schedule. | Verify percent complete is real, then protect the approach. |
| CPI above 1, SPI below 1 | Under budget but behind schedule. | Spend some of the cost cushion on the critical path. |
| CPI below 1, SPI above 1 | Ahead of schedule but over budget. | Check whether speed is being bought with overtime or expediting. |
| CPI below 1, SPI below 1 | Over budget and behind schedule. | Re-plan formally; small corrections rarely recover both at once. |
Try the troubled version in the calculator: BAC $200,000, actual cost $120,000, planned value $110,000, percent complete 50. Earned value is $100000.00, cost variance is $-20000.00, schedule variance is $-10000.00, CPI is 0.83 and SPI is 0.91. The project has spent $120,000 to earn $100,000 of value, and it earned less than the $110,000 planned. That is the bottom row of the table, and it is exactly the pattern earned value exists to catch early, while a simple spend-versus-budget report would only have said the project spent 60% of its budget.
Forecasting EAC, ETC and VAC from the CPI on this page
This calculator deliberately stops at status measures. It does not output an estimate at completion, because EAC is not one formula: the right version depends on whether you believe the current cost efficiency will continue, and that is a judgement the project manager has to make, not the tool. What the tool gives you is the CPI those forecasts are built from.
The most common forecast assumes current cost efficiency continues: EAC = BAC / CPI. Using the worked example, with the unrounded CPI of 1.2727, EAC = $100,000 / 1.2727 = about $78,571. From there, estimate to complete is ETC = EAC – AC, about $78,571 – $55,000 = $23,571 still to spend, and variance at completion is VAC = BAC – EAC, about $21,429 under the original budget. A second EAC variant, EAC = AC + (BAC – EV), assumes the variance so far was a one-off and the rest of the work runs at plan rate; on the same figures it gives $55,000 + $30,000 = $85,000. The two answers differ by over $6,000 from the same status data, which is why any page that prints a single EAC without naming its assumption is hiding the decision that matters. The variants, and the cost-estimating discipline behind them, are set out in the GAO Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide. Two related checks belong in the same conversation: how much contingency the baseline is carrying, which a contingency percentage calculator expresses as a share of the estimate, and what a changed forecast does to the approved funding profile, which is the question a budget impact calculator is built for.
What competing calculators miss
Most earned value tools online are more complete on paper and less honest in practice. Comparing the leading results for this keyword against the code behind this page:
- Forecasts presented as facts: several competitors print EAC, ETC, VAC and TCPI from a single hidden assumption, usually BAC / CPI, without saying so. Here the forecast variants are explained in prose with both answers shown, and the tool itself claims only what it computes.
- EV typed in by hand: most tools ask you to enter earned value directly, which assumes you already did the hardest measurement in the method. This one asks for percent complete and derives EV from BAC, the way progress is actually reported on site.
- No reading of the result: competitor outputs are bare number lists. The verdict badge here reads the CPI and SPI combination for you, and the interpretation table above covers all four states with a first response for each.
- Percent-complete traps left unmentioned: tools rarely warn that percent complete must be measured work, not elapsed time or spend ratio. The tooltip on the percent complete field and the steps above both say so, because a bad percent complete corrupts every output downstream.
Where percent complete can mislead you
Every number on this page is only as good as the percent complete behind EV. Three failure modes show up repeatedly. First, the 90 percent syndrome: tasks sit at 90% complete for weeks because the last slice is harder than reported, inflating EV and flattering both indexes. Second, level-of-effort work such as project management support earns value with time by definition, so it can mask slippage in the discrete work packages underneath it. Third, front-loaded progress claims early in a project make SPI look strong while the critical path is already slipping, because SPI compares money values and knows nothing about task sequence. Earned value also says nothing about quality: work can be earned on paper and still fail inspection. Treat a good CPI and SPI as a prompt to verify the underlying progress measurement, not as proof the project is healthy. Formal systems guard against this with the integrated baseline review and the surveillance requirements described in the ANSI/EIA-748 standard for earned value management systems.
Frequently asked questions
It computes earned value (EV), cost variance (CV), schedule variance (SV), the cost performance index (CPI) and the schedule performance index (SPI) from four inputs: budget at completion, actual cost, planned value and percent complete. It does not compute forecasts such as EAC or ETC; those are derived from the CPI by hand, as the forecasting section on this page explains.
Earned value is percent complete multiplied by the budget at completion: EV = % Complete x BAC. At 70% complete on a $100,000 budget, EV is $70,000. Most other calculators ask you to type EV in directly; this one derives it from measured progress, which is how project teams actually report status.
It means the project earned $1.27 of budgeted value for every $1.00 actually spent, so it is running under budget on the work performed. A CPI of exactly 1 is on budget, and a CPI below 1, such as 0.83, means the work performed cost more than its budgeted value.
A negative cost variance means actual cost exceeds earned value, so the project is over budget for the work done. A negative schedule variance means earned value is less than planned value, so the project is behind schedule. Both variances are money figures, not days: an SV of $-10000.00 means $10,000 less work was earned than planned.
Because percent complete is what teams measure: units installed, deliverables accepted, or milestones reached. Earned value is then a calculation, EV = % Complete x BAC, rather than a second estimate. Use measured progress for percent complete, not elapsed time and not spend divided by budget, or every output inherits the error.
The standard forecast is EAC = BAC / CPI, using the unrounded CPI. On the worked example, $100,000 / 1.2727 gives an EAC of about $78,571, an ETC of about $23,571 still to spend, and a VAC of about $21,429 under budget. If the variance so far was a one-off, use EAC = AC + (BAC – EV) instead, which gives $85,000 on the same data. Name the assumption whenever you quote an EAC.
The matching index shows as Infinity, because dividing earned value by zero has no meaningful answer. In practice a zero AC or PV at a status date means the underlying records are incomplete, so fix the cost or baseline data rather than reporting the index.
At every formal status date: weekly on short or fast-moving projects, monthly on most others. The value of the method is in the trend, not a single snapshot. A CPI that slips a little each period is a warning while recovery is still cheap; the same figure found late usually is not.
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References
- Project Management Institute. PMBOK Guide. Accessed October 21, 2026.
- U.S. Government Accountability Office. Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide (GAO-20-195G). Accessed October 21, 2026.
- Defense Acquisition University. Earned Value Management (EVM), Acquipedia. Accessed October 21, 2026.
- SAE International. ANSI/EIA-748-D, Earned Value Management Systems. Accessed October 21, 2026.