How to record and compare monthly progresses in one project file?

[Helen]

I am using Project Professional 2003. I want to update the project progress
month by month and generate monthly reports for the variance of costs and
completed works. Could you please let me know how to realize it? Thanks.

 

[vanita]

Hi

To update the project progress on monthly basis open 'Tracking Gantt' view
with 'Tracking table'. In this view you can input actual time progress and
the printout would show you the compariosn between planned and actual data
for time progress.

To input Actual cost data open 'Tracking Gantt' view with 'Cost' table. To
input 'Actual cost' yourself you will have to go to Tools > Options >
Calculation and uncheck the option 'Actaul costs are always calculated by
MSP'. Printout of this view would show you the comparison between 'Actual'
and 'Planned' costs.

In Project > Project information update the monthly 'Status date'.

I hope it helps.
Vanita

 

[JulieS]

Hello Helen,

To add just one comment to Vanita's good advice, make sure you save
a baseline for your project file **before** tracking data. When you
save a baseline, Project will copy the scheduled start, finish,
work, duration, and cost for each task into the baseline fields.
Then as you update Actual Start or Actual Finish project will
calculate the variance between the baseline data and the actual
data.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional
information about Microsoft Project

 

[Helen]

Thank you very much Vanita.

But I don't want to overwrite the progress of previous month by current
progress because what I need is to compare and report which tasks have been
updated during a month. So I need to compare Current Actual to Previous
Actual instead of Actual to Plan. Can you give me some suggestions please?
Thank you!

Helen

 

[Helen]

Hello Julie,

Thanks very much for your kindly reply. But my question is more complicated.
Please see my reply to Vanita.

Thanks,
Helen

 

[JulieS]

Hello Helen,

Thanks for the clarification. You could make use of the 11 baseline
fields or the custom cost, work, number , duration, text fields to
keep monthly progress. You'd have to write the custom formulas to
compare baseline1 start against baseline2 start for example. You'll
need to figure out what measurements (work? cost? duration? start?
finish ? ) are important for you to track. Then ensure you copy the
data into the appropriate spare fields. An other option is to
export the data out to Excel and perform the comparison there.

Julie
Project MVP