how do i enter actual costs

[kimusubi]

I want to enter actual costs from our accounting system manually into
Project. How can this be done to calculate Actual Cost of Work Performed?

 

[Jim Aksel]

Please read everything before doing anything ... mistakes can be costly.

First, you need to turn off AutoCalcultions and clear all the values.
Tools/Options....
pull the calculations tab
UNcheck the box that says "Actual Costs are always calculated by Microsoft
Office Project"
check the box: Edits to total cost will be spread to the status date
set Deftaulfixed cost accrual as you wish --- prorated is recommened.
Click OK

Show all tasks.
Insert the Actual Cost column if needed.
Highlight the entire column
Edit/Clear/Clear Contents (or Ctrl+ Del)
*** You have just wiped out all actual costs for the project. ****

You need to have some way to map the Actuals from your Accounting System to
line items in your Project. Most accounting systems aggregate costs at a
much higher level than the detailed tasks in Project.

For the sake of simplicity, I assume you have a field such as Text1 in the
Task Usage View that contains job numbers for tasks... this is what maps to
the cost accounting system.

You can enter some type of one line summary task (we call it Cost Data) and
underneath that we have indented every job number costed in the Cost
Accounting System. That is: the name of the task is the same as the job
number-- JN 10A103A. No resources or work, just Job Numbers. The job
numbers also appear in the Text1 column for that row.

On the right side of the Task Usage View, right click on the Details Column
and make sure the actual costs row is displayed. On that same view, format
the time scale at the top to be something equal to your cost accounting
system. For example, monthly.

Each month, you can cross reference your output from cost accounting, by Job
Number and manually key the dollars into the Actual Cost row for the Job
Number Rows. The data needs to be calculated "monthly." You can now export
BCWP, BCWS, and ACWP to Excel using the Export Wizard and graph away.

VB Code can be written to populate this information for you, contact me if
further assistance is needed in that area.

If you found this post helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim

 

[kimusubi]

Looks good. Just the thing I wanted. Thanks. I'll keep you in mind for future
mysteries.

Larry

 

[kimusubi]

Jim,

WRT entering actual costs: I did as you suggested and everything seemed to
work as I expected. Then I entered 100% complete on an activity and when I
hit return Project entered the BCWS value of that activity into ACWP. In your
message you encouraged me to plot BCWS, BCWP, and ACWP which Project does
rather nicely, but now I have the wrong ACWP! Basically, if this happened on
every activity, I would have about twice the actual costs in my plot. I have
a request into MS Support, but so far I am not certain they understand the
question.

I downloaded a trial copy of Project 2007 and it performs exactly the same
way. The program must think it is doing things properly so it must be a
question of my understanding. However, I would like to be able to progress my
project and have my ACWP remain equal to the timephased actual costs entries.

What's the skinny?

Thanks,

Larry aka Kimusubi

 

[ProjectUser]

Jim,

This was helpful to me as well.

If one is using this method, is it possible to baseline with projected
budget numbers prior to tracking actuals? I need to be able to post actuals
monthly and then check variance based on a budgeted amount.