Cost control

[Asolepius]

Am I missing something? I can only assign 1 cost to an activity. Sometimes
there are several cost elements needed to get the work done, even for a
single deliverable, and they may well be accrued differently. I can only
work around this by creating extra activities - rather cumbersome. These are
purchase costs not resource costs.

 

[JulieD]

Hi

to get around this i manage my costs for tasks in excel and link back to
project ... this gives me the added benefit of also using excel functions
etc.

(alternatively, you could put the total in the fixed cost column and record
the breakdown etc in a task note)

Cheers
JulieD

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Julie gave good advice - total the costs in Excel and link them to the fixed
cost cell for the associated task. As a consolation, remember that project
is not intended as a one-stop solution for all your project managment
concerns and most emphatically it is not a replacement for your other
accounting applications. There are many items that are part of the overall
financial managment of your portfolio that are simply not dealt with in
MSP - such things as overhead, profits, cost of capital, facilities costs,
revenues, opportunity costs, etc.

Steve House [MVP]

 

[Asolepius]

Hi

to get around this i manage my costs for tasks in excel and link back to
project ... this gives me the added benefit of also using excel functions
etc.

(alternatively, you could put the total in the fixed cost column and
record the breakdown etc in a task note)

Cheers
JulieD

That's exactly what I do with Excel - but it doesn't get over the different
accruals on the same task. This rather upsets the monthly cash flow report.
I also use the notes extensively in the way you suggest.

 

[John]

That's exactly what I do with Excel - but it doesn't get over the different
accruals on the same task. This rather upsets the monthly cash flow report.
I also use the notes extensively in the way you suggest.

Asolepius,
See my reply to your other post. With VBA you can do anything you need.

John

 

[davegb]

I'm a bit confused here (not an unusual condition for me). Before
Project had calculatable fields of it's own, I used to link data over,
do all kinds of number crunching in Excel. Even had one app for a
client in which we closed the loop and brought the results back into
custom fields in Project. Really impressed my client's top management!
But why total costs in Excel, unless you want the reporting
capabilities? I'd use the custom cost fields and a calculation field
for a total, all right in Project and not involving external links,
which can be hazardous, in my experience. What other advantage does
linking values into Excel have?

 

[JackD]

I agree. If you can do it in the project file using some fields and a
formula or two, then that is the best way.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Yes you can do calculated fields but how do you handle something like a task
that has expenses for travel, hotels, meals, car rental, etc, etc yet
there's only one "fixed cost" field for non-resource attributable items like
that? I suggest using Excel to compute the actual total for the various
non-resource costs of the task and then link that back into the Project
fixed cost field where it then can be summed with the resource costs to come
up with the total cost for the task of interest.

 

[JulieD]

Hi

i'm with Steve here, i would love to be able to get project to include
different cost columns in the total cost calculation (or the fixed cost
column) - but have not yet found a way to do it - the best i've managed is
to keep a listing of the different categories of cost, the GST compentent
and all the other stuff i need to know in Excel and link the total of these
into the fixed cost column and have it add into the total project cost
column - if i'm missing something obvious i would appreciate enlightenment.

btw, i've been using this method for over 5 years and have never had a
problem with corruption or crashing caused by this sort of link.

Cheers
JulieD