R&D Project & Budget Tracking Platform

The problem: R&D budgets tracked in email threads and spreadsheets

A publicly listed company was managing R&D project effort allocation and budget tracking through a combination of email-based approval workflows and manual Excel consolidation. Employees logged time against projects via emailed timesheets. Managers approved via reply-all. The finance team consolidated everything monthly in spreadsheets.

The problems were systemic. Effort data was always weeks stale. Budget overruns were discovered during monthly consolidation, not when they happened. The approval chain for effort logging — employee → project lead → department head → finance — was managed entirely through email, creating compliance risk for a publicly listed company that needed auditable records.

What made this complex

• Hierarchical approval workflow: effort logs require multiple approval levels based on project type, department, and cost centre
• Real-time budget tracking: project budgets need to reflect approved effort in real time, not after monthly consolidation
• Automated financial reporting that meets the compliance and audit requirements of a publicly listed company
• Integration with existing HR systems for employee data and organisational hierarchy
• Multi-department usage: R&D, engineering, finance, and management — each with different views and permissions
• Historical data migration from years of spreadsheet-based tracking

What we built

A custom effort tracking and budget management platform that replaced the email-and-spreadsheet workflow with a structured, auditable system.

Structured effort logging

Employees log effort directly in the system against specific projects and tasks. The interface is designed for daily use — minimal clicks to log time, with project and task lists pre-populated based on the employee's assignments.

Hierarchical approval workflow

Submitted effort logs route through the correct approval chain automatically. Project leads see their team's submissions. Department heads see aggregate views. Finance sees budget impact. Each approval is timestamped and logged for audit compliance.

Real-time budget dashboards

Project budgets update in real time as effort is approved. Managers see burn rate, remaining budget, and projected completion cost. Budget threshold alerts fire automatically — at 75%, 90%, and 100% of allocated budget — giving project leads time to adjust before overruns occur.

Automated financial reports

Monthly financial reports generate automatically with full audit trails. Cost allocation by project, department, and cost centre is calculated from approved effort data — no manual consolidation required. Reports meet the compliance standards required for a publicly listed company.

The result

90% reduction in paper-based documentation. The manual email-and-spreadsheet workflow was replaced entirely with a structured system that produces auditable records automatically.

Budget overruns are now detected in real time instead of weeks after the fact. The finance team recovered significant time previously spent on monthly effort consolidation. The audit trail satisfies compliance requirements without manual record-keeping.

This was the second enterprise system Madgeek built for this client, and was followed by contract management and travel management platforms — a multi-year engineering partnership that delivered four production systems.

Technical details

• Hierarchical approval engine with configurable routing rules
• Real-time budget tracking with automated threshold alerts
• Automated monthly financial report generation with audit trails
• Integration with HR systems for employee and organisational data
• Role-based dashboards for employees, project leads, department heads, and finance
• Part of a 4-system enterprise platform built over a multi-year partnership