Composite Material Resource?

[Spencer]

I would like to know how to create a single material resource that is
comprised of multiple items. The material resources are for items such as
travel and would be comprised of items like:

Travel to Denver
-Airfare $200
-Per Diem $125
-Rental $45
-Parking $10

For ease of planning, I would like to select 15 trips to Denver for 3 days
each so that the total travel cost would be (15x$200) + (15x3)x$125 +
(15x3)x$45 + (15x3)x10 = $11,100.

We have 20 travel locations and each location has different unit costs. The
data needs to be itemized for reporting and proposal purposes.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Spencer --

Microsoft Project simply does not allow the complexity you seek in using
Material resources. Because of your need for itemized reporting, I would
recommend that you keep this type of information in an Excel spreadsheet,
and then copy and paste the total for each trip into the Fixed Cost column
for the relevant task in the Microsoft Project plan. Hope this helps.

 

[Mark Everett | PMP]

Spencer -

As Dale wrote, you cannot have a Material resource that has composit
components. You can have a Material resource called "Denver" that has
all the required cost elements in it, perhaps itemized in the notes
field. The other issue is that you cannot assign the same resource to
a task more than one time.

Some alternatives would be to have a custom text field (or Custom
Outline Codes if you are using Server) with your 20 travel
destinations and another text field with with the composit breakdown
for the 20 destinations. Or you could use some combination of those
suggestions.

Mark