Cost vs. client rates

[Mark Etheridge]

Hello,

I am using Enterprise Project Server 2003. We have multiple projects and all
the resources base cost is $40 / hr. Each project (about 20 of them)
represent different clients. Therefore, each project standard rate (or
client rate) is different (rates range from $70 - $150). At the end of the
day, our company would like to print off a revenue report (by project or by
client). So we would need to use the different rates for each. I am trying
to figure out how I can do this when using the 'Enterprise resource pool'
where all projects are linked into?? I know there is table rates A-E, but I
am kinda confused how it would work, considering 1 resource could be on
multiple projects.

We would also like to print off a margin report where we compare the base
cost to the actual bill out rates.

Any feedback or guidance would be appreciated.

Mark

 

[Steve House]

The "standard rate" field in Project is the cost of the resource to you, NOT
the client rate as your message indicates. The 5 rate tables A-E are to
allow for different costs when the same resource does diffent jobs - in my
case, for example I work as both a consultant and as a trainer. My pay is
different between those two categories, so when I'm used in a project task
as a trainer it costs the project budget $XX but when I'm providing
consulting it would cost the project $YY. Rate table A standard rate, the
field you also see in the plain resource sheet's standard rate column, is my
rate as a trainer. Rate table B's standard rate would be my rate as a
consultant.

Personally I am very very uncomfortable with trying to compute billing and
revenue data at all in Project - it is a work scheduling and costing
application, not an accounting, payroll, or time and billing application.
Consider - Joe get's $400 per day in salary. But MS Project only
accumulates costs for actual time worked so if you use him Tuesday for 1
task that lasts 2 hours the Project budget is debited $100. But you're
probably going to bill the client based on the full $400 for any portion of
a day he's used and Project has no way of knowing anything at all about
that. Your billing rate and/or fixed price bids also needs to also take
into account facilities costs, rent, utilities, other overheads, business
taxes, etc that simply aren't anywhere to be found in Project. Project can
provide you with good estimates on projected labour and materials costs of a
project and can track actual costs in those broad categories. But IMHO it
should ONLY be used to track your *internal costs* for the specific
mariginal cost that the individual project contributes to your overall cost
of doing business. If you are billing clients, the data it provides is
analogous to the wholesale costs of merchandise subsequently sold by a
retailer. And just like you wouldn't dream of trying to get K-Mart's
wholesale order system to track their entire cost of business and
setting/tracking the retail shelf selling costs and revenues of their
products, IMO you shouldn't try to use Project to do those functions in your
business either. Take the cost data it provides and use it as one input
into a purpose-built time and billing or accounting program. Otherwise
you're very likely to eventually paint yourself into a corner trying to do
it all in Project.

 

[Matt Steele]

We have developed a billing rates feature that plugs into
project and it works very well to accomplish exactly what
we want project for: to provide enterprise project
management.

We build each project estimate in our system. Each
estimate tells us how much our cost is, and how much we
will bill the client for each resource on each task. And
the data is timephased.

The trouble with using the cost tables A-E is that you
cannot simultaneously do math against the calculated
values resulting from each table. You can't portray both
values in the same report and do math on them
simultaneously. Well, you can, but takes programming.

As for G&A, as Steve suggests, that is accounting system
data and we do not contain that data in my EPM system.
However, because we have time-phase cost AND time-phased
billing for each project in the enterprise, my data is
that half of the company financial Proforma that provides
us with the view of exactly how much gross margin is in
the future months and then the accountant applies the G&A
section of the data. Together we get very accurate
(generally less than 5% margin of error) profit/loss
projections that go to the banks and help us to plan for
company cash flow. It works very well.

Send me an email if I can help you.
Matt