Hi Adrian
interesting one ... project is "geared" towards a series of tasks leading to
a measurable, defined outcome .. and what you're proposing wouldn't fit
within this definition, however, project i think, would be okay for your
needs.
the way i would approach it is to list all the carers as resources and edit
their calendars to specify availability.
list each of the clients as a heading and under each client enter the tasks
that need to be done - i guess you'll rely heavily on recurring tasks
(insert / recurring tasks). You'll also need to use the priority setting
for each task. If a task has to happen on a certain day at a certain time
make sure you set the priority setting to 1000.
now assign the carer to the tasks they are responsible for and use resource
levelling to "delay" the tasks if the carers are over allocated.
You can use the resource allocation view to get a good list of each carer
and what they're responsible for and you can also show remaining
availability in this view as well if you need to juggle the carers.
Even though you're not using project strictly "correctly" i would still
recommend attending a 2-3 day hands-on course to come to terms with some of
the basic concepts in project and have a read of Mike Glen's series of
tutorials
http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc
to get a good grasp of how it thinks. This is especially important when
setting up the calendars at the beginning, if you assign multiple resources
to one task or if you make any changes 'down the track'
Hope this helps and i'll be interested to see other's opinions also on using
Project for this purpose.
As for costing - project isn't an accounting system but it will give you
reasonable "ball park" figures.
If you don't have project it might be worth getting a demo version (if
they're still available) and trying it out before spending the money on the
full product.
Cheers
JulieD
