Cost and usage of "Tools resources"...

[Vit]

Hi all,

I'm trying to understand how can I track the usage and the cost of a
equipment resource....

I'm working in the construction field and can happen that I have to
hire some equipments....

in this case, every day that I rent the equipment, I have to pay a
fixed price...

but I'd like to track also the number of hours that I'm going to use
tha equipment, because I need to understand when I have to change the
tools of the equipment....

I have create a "working" resource, and in this case I'm going to
track the number of hours that the resource will work... but how can I
"update" the cost?????

here you are an example:

- EXCAVATOR cost per day: $ 1000.00 (fixed per day, it doesn't
matter if it is used 1 hour, more or less....)

day 1: EXAVATOR Usage: 8 hours
day 2: EXAVATOR Usage: 4 hours
day 3: EXAVATOR Usage: 0 hours
day 4: EXAVATOR Usage: 3 hours

I'd like to track the following:

Total number of hours "usage" : 15 hours
Total number of hours "billable": 32 hours (8 hours/day * 4 days) ->
Cost of the resources: $ 4000.00

how can I do that?????

thank you so much

Cheers

Vit

 

[RichardJ]

Vit,
I would create the resource of Excavator and assign a cost of $125 p/h to
the resource. Create the task(s) for the Excavator to be assigned to and,
once you have defined the work, Baseline the tasks to create a cost and work
profile.

When you record the actual hours worked by the Excavator, you then can
compare to the baseline you took

 

[Steve House]

This is one of the reasons I harp on the idea that Project is not an
accounting program and one shouldn't try to use it as one. It does not
track the cash outlay necessary to do the project, it computes the economic
cost of doing the project's work. In your example, while the cash outlay
for the firm is $4000, your project is actually only deriving $1875 worth of
benefit from it and the portion of that cost that should attributed to doing
the project is only $1875. It's up to the accountants to figure out where
the other $2125 has gone. Consider what it would be if that excavator was
already owned by the company and paid for so you didn't have to rent it ...
would that mean it was free and no cost should accrue into the budget when
you use it? Nope, because there is a cost involved by having it tied up in
your project instead of with some other economically productive activity
(like renting it to a third party perhaps) and that lost opportunity
represents a cost of doing your project even though no invoices are paid or
cash changes hands.

It needs to be treated just like your borrowing Joe Employee from another
department to do an hour's work in your project. You don't cover his entire
salary for the day or month or year from your budget - you're only
responsible for the cost of the actual hour that you've used him, his home
department is responsible for the rest. Tools, whether internally owned or
rented, need to be accounted for in the same way.