We need to back up a bit. From what you posted, it seems like you want to
enter a budgeted amount for a particular accounting category and then track
a timeline of payments or charges made against that budget. MS Project
doesn't do that - it's not a cash acounting program, it's a work scheduling
and tracking program that allow you to estimate costs of the work as
scheduled and the work as performed. It's tracking work - costs are one of
the attributes of the work but they can't be tracked independently of the
work they're paying for.
You have a list of cost categories but I don't see any tasks there at all,
thus it's not a schedule. Since it's not a schedule, there's nothing there
to create costs that can then be tracked. A task is always an observable
physical activity engaged in by a resource. A summary task is a collection
of those tasks such that they detail all of the activities required to
produce a specific deliverable. You're trying to make an accounting
category into a summary task but things like "ERP Annual Cost" are not
descriptions of a tangible deliverable. The cost of the tasks is the cost
of employing the resource for the man-hours required plus any materials
consumed plus fixed costs such as rents, overheads, and other expenses - it
is the cost of doing the work to produce a specific deliverable. You are
unable to enter timephased costs because you have nothing in your project
(as outlined here) to charge those costs against. All you have listed are
budgets (and not really even those, as Project uses the concept, since the
"budget" is not an allowable expenditure but rather a bottom up estimate of
projected costs), not physical work. To charge costs, you need to create a
real schedule where you'll see that Joe Consultant is going to start writing
a report analysing XXX on 15 Jan that is estimated to finish 15 Feb with him
working 8 hours per day. That task can have a fixed cost associated with
it. Then you can use the Task Usage view to enter timephased actual hours,
showing he worked 8 hours on 15/01, 6 hours on 16/01, 2 hours on 17/01, 8
hours on 18/01 and so forth. Project will compute a pro-rated portion of
the fixed cost for each period, based on the hours worked versus the total
required. (If the fixed cost is $500 and the task will require 100
man-hours to complete, when he works 5 hours in a day the fixed cost
associated with that task for that day will be $25.) To see the numbers, add
the Fixed Cost and Actual Fixed Cost lines the the usage view timeline -
formatting it to show Work, Cost, Fixed Cost, Actual Work, Actual Cost,
Actual Fixed Cost. You can't enter the timephased Fixed Cost directly
AFAIK, its distribution is computed based on the hours distribution of the
resources.
There's no single tool that covers all the needs of the PM. Use Project for
creating work schedules and tracking progress, accounting programs for
tracking actual cash flows and expenditures, invoices, revenues, and
disbursments, Excel for number crunching.
Hope this helps
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit
http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm for the FAQs
Michael Hansen said:
Hi Steve
Can I please extend this question which is related to a situation I am
working through.
I have a scenario where I have the following example schedule:
- Software Acquisition
-- ERP Purchase Cost
-- ERP Annual Maintenance
-- BI Purchase Cost
-- BI Annual Maintenance
-- Consulting Services
-- Annual Support
All the above tasks have a fixed cost and a material resource associated
to
it. I would like to be able to enter actual costs against these tasks in
timephased manner which is more applicable to consuming costs against the
Consulting Services tasks through the project. This is for a time &
materials project where we don't have costs associated against the scoped
tasks, therefore, I thought the above approach would be best. Then I can
feed this information into some Earned Value Management Analysis all going
well.
My problem is that I cannot manually enter the actual costs in a
timephased
manner as I would expect. When doing so this actually adds against the
total
cost and does not reduce the remaining cost. However, using the 50%
Complete
buttons work OK which does not work for what I need for consulting tasks
taking place on various days.
I hope I have explained my scenario well enough for you.
Regards
Michael Hansen
