Act. Cost & Work imports alter prior historical import values

[Steve T]

When I import real weekly Actual Cost and Actual Work
values at the task level from an Access table, the week
following's import can change prior imported values in
cases where the prior week's import actuals were less that
the Baseline Work plan for that week. Project undesirably
spreads some of this week's import Actual Work values back
to the prior weeks (up to the week's Baseline Work value),
apparently attempting to adhere to the baseline plan
values. But this inappropriately alters actual historical
values for Actual Work, Actual Cost, Cost, ACWP, and CV.
In addition to the above, also upon succeding imports,
Project also undesirably respreads and recalculates Actual
Cost values after each import (even after Baseline Work
level is reached).
How can I lock-in the imported values so that newer
imports do not inappropriately spread to prior weeks? Or
is there another way to keep previously imported values
from changing when later values are imported?
Thank you'
Steve T.

 

[Geoff]

Hi Steve,
I don't believe Project takes any notice of the Baseline
fields and will not repopulate "up" to those values at
all. If you include/import values in the Actual Work
fields, you need to ensure that the data is granular
enough, date wise, to relate to the time period in which
it occurred. The other fields will alter (Actual Cost,
ACWP etc) directly from Actual Work updates.
I would think if you control the import into Actual Work
fields that relate to the correct timesheet period, then
you will find Project is doing the right thing.
Re importing of Actual Cost, I believe this should be
going to a customised field (Cost1, Cost2 etc), as Actual
Cost is a calculated field in project relating to Actual
Work completed.
The Earned Value measures would need to be related to your
customised fields to get consistent results eg in CV.

Regards............Geoff

 

[Guest]

Geoff,
Thanks for your reply. I am importing Actual Work and
Actual Cost to a 'task' using the WBS for merge key. The
task is 10d duration over 3 weeks with different work
(hours) in each week. Upon import, Project parses the
imported Actual Work over the task's scheduled weeks from
start to the current status date (not just in the desired
week) for all the hours imported. It parses the hours up
to the amount in the Work (or Baseline Work) field for
that week, then does the same in the next week, etc.,
until the import value has been used up. This undesirably
replaces prior import values with potentially new values.
So my problem is how to import these items into specific
weeks for the task, rather than as a cumulative value.
When you say "granular enough, date wise, to relate to the
time period", how do i relate the import to a specific
date period for the task? The timescale is in weeks, but
that is just a 'View' choice.
At the same time, I am also importing Actual Cost, which
works if you clear Options/Calculation/'Actual costs are
always calculated by Microsoft Project' box, but also has
the same above problem.
Thank you for the advice,
Steve T/BAE Systems