Avoiding actual hours calculations

[Gio]

Hi there,

On the calculations tab in Options I've deselected the
checkbox for Updates to Task status updates resource
status and so I though that when I entered task progress
that it would never generate actual work values but to my
suprise there were some instances where it did.

Example1: When I mark a task as 100% actual hours are
entered.

Example2: Assume an unstarted task with a duration of 5
days. Now you update the task to indicate an actual
duration of 6 days and a remaining duration of 2 days.
Project enters actual hours for the first 6 days even
though I set the option not to!

Are there other exceptions and can one avoid this/turn of
the calculation of actual hours completely?

 

[Sarah]

It sounds like you're trying to cripple the software. MS Project was
designed specifically to track actual work spent on a task and adjust
the rest of the schedule accordingly. For your example 1, if you tell
it that a task is 100% complete, it assumes that some work was
performed in order to complete this task, unless you tell it
otherwise. If you do not ensure that a task has zero Remaining Work
before marking it 100%, the software will assume that the available
Remaining Work was used. This seems to be what you are experiencing.

If you do not want to track actual work in a project, do not assign
resources to any of it, although this seriously bypasses most of what
it was designed to do. Have you received any formal training in this
software? I would highly recommend it.

Sarah

 

[Gio]

Thanks for the comments Sarah, I'll deduct from them that
you do not have an answer to my question. Crippling the
software is probably in the nature of my job I'm afraid,
that of a MOUS certified MS Project Instructor at the
South African Microsoft CTEC of the year...
I look forward to posting more questions.
Kind regards
Gio

 

[Steve House]

Appears that the actual hours indeed gets calculated when the task is set to
100% complete. The only way I can see to avoid it is not to assign
resources. Of course, once it calculates those hours you can edit them back
to whatever you like, including zero, without affecting the task's percant
completion.

 

[trix]

GIO,
In the for what it's worth department: I have experienced the exact same problem. and have created a work around using an excel spread sheet.