hourly billed resources

[Shane]

Hello Project experts

I am invovled in a Project course right now, but have an more immediate need

I work for a consulting firm, and here is the situation

When we do a project, we want to know the duration in calendar days, but the effort in terms of hours so we can develop a budget based on our hourly fees. For example, we know a task could take 4 hours to do, but because we have to work on other client work at the same time, the task won't be complete for 2 calendar days

How do we reflect that in Project?

Thanks!

 

[Steve House]

The resource assignment percentage is essentially the amount of time over
the duration of the task that the resource actually works on it, expressed
as a percentage. If the task duration is 16 hours (2 days) and the resource
devotes 4 man-hours of work to it over that time period, his assignment
percentage is 4/16 or 25%. There are a variety of ways you can enter that -
either mentally calculate the percentage and assign at that level or split
the screen and specify duration and work and let Project calculate the
percentage.

FYI - IMHO it is an extremely bad idea to use your billing fees as the rates
for the resources. MS Project tracks your internal costs - labour,
materials, etc - to create the project deliverables, not the revenues it
might generate (if any), and the budget developed in MSP will reflect those
internal costs to do the project's work. Consider the situation where work
is done that is necessary to complete the project. work you have to pay
people to do, but for some reason is not billable to the client. You still
need to account for those costs in the project budget and actuals and
Project can do this but it cannot distinguish those costs from billable
costs. Add your overhead, profit requirements, etc, to that estimate to
come up with your bid to the client but track billable working time, billed
rates, and revenues in a separate, purpose-built, time-and-billing
accounting application. You can import and export data from Project to link
the two but use each tool for the job it's best at.

Hello Project experts!

I am invovled in a Project course right now, but have an more immediate need.

I work for a consulting firm, and here is the situation:

When we do a project, we want to know the duration in calendar days, but

the effort in terms of hours so we can develop a budget based on our hourly
fees. For example, we know a task could take 4 hours to do, but because we
have to work on other client work at the same time, the task won't be
complete for 2 calendar days.

 

[Shane]

Very good advice, and I thank you

I plan on using Project in the way you indicate - to prepare the initial budget, but in terms of tracking actual time, we have a separate application that individuals will enter their time in, and at the end of the project, we'll only bill what is agreed initially. (unless it goes out of scope of course)


----- Steve House wrote: ----

The resource assignment percentage is essentially the amount of time ove
the duration of the task that the resource actually works on it, expresse
as a percentage. If the task duration is 16 hours (2 days) and the resourc
devotes 4 man-hours of work to it over that time period, his assignmen
percentage is 4/16 or 25%. There are a variety of ways you can enter that
either mentally calculate the percentage and assign at that level or spli
the screen and specify duration and work and let Project calculate th
percentage

FYI - IMHO it is an extremely bad idea to use your billing fees as the rate
for the resources. MS Project tracks your internal costs - labour
materials, etc - to create the project deliverables, not the revenues i
might generate (if any), and the budget developed in MSP will reflect thos
internal costs to do the project's work. Consider the situation where wor
is done that is necessary to complete the project. work you have to pa
people to do, but for some reason is not billable to the client. You stil
need to account for those costs in the project budget and actuals an
Project can do this but it cannot distinguish those costs from billabl
costs. Add your overhead, profit requirements, etc, to that estimate t
come up with your bid to the client but track billable working time, bille
rates, and revenues in a separate, purpose-built, time-and-billin
accounting application. You can import and export data from Project to lin
the two but use each tool for the job it's best at

Hello Project experts

the effort in terms of hours so we can develop a budget based on our hourl
fees. For example, we know a task could take 4 hours to do, but because w
have to work on other client work at the same time, the task won't b
complete for 2 calendar days