Material Cost's

[shawn]

In my baseline budget i allocated x amount of dollars of material to one
task. Now that the project has started im recieving material invocies for
that task. Hopefully by the end of the project all the invoices will be less
than the material budget i allocated for the task.

How can i show each invoice for material and also attach it to its
appropriate task.

So after each invoice for material comes in i would enter or assign it to a
task and hopefully be under budget by the end of the task.

My intial material budget is one lump sum for materials, but i want to track
all invoices and be able to view them as they affect my over all material
cost as time goes on.

How do i do this??

 

[John]

In my baseline budget i allocated x amount of dollars of material to one
task. Now that the project has started im recieving material invocies for
that task. Hopefully by the end of the project all the invoices will be less
than the material budget i allocated for the task.

How can i show each invoice for material and also attach it to its
appropriate task.

So after each invoice for material comes in i would enter or assign it to a
task and hopefully be under budget by the end of the task.

My intial material budget is one lump sum for materials, but i want to track
all invoices and be able to view them as they affect my over all material
cost as time goes on.

How do i do this??

shawn,
In my opinion the best way to do this is with Excel. Project is not an
accounting application. It will track costs, but not but is not designed
to readily handle the level of detail you want.

However, you could set up spare cost fields for each invoice payment.
For example, let's say task "A" has 5 invoice periods. Set up 5 spare
cost fields to enter each payment. You could also set up a custom field
to keep track of the difference between your budget and the sum of all
invoice payments. In the above example, you might use Cost6 with a
formula that sums up Cost fields 1 thru 5 and subtracts that sum from
the budget (i.e. baseline cost if that's what you are calling the
budget).

John
Project MVP

 

[shawn]

Thanks John, i will give it a try. Now with the excel part? when you click on
a material and then click resources info and then notes that will take you to
a screen where one can attach an excel spread sheet as a note. This the route
your are talking about?

 

[John]

Thanks John, i will give it a try. Now with the excel part? when you click on
a material and then click resources info and then notes that will take you to
a screen where one can attach an excel spread sheet as a note. This the route
your are talking about?

shawn,
No I'm am not talking about a hyperlink. I'm suggesting you create a
separate worksheet in Excel for tracking your invoicing data. I'm not
suggesting you link it to Project at all.

John
Project MVP

 

[shawn]

Thanks again John

Im new to this program, but i will use hyperlink to track my incoming
invoices.

Now after each month my material cost for a certain task will be increasing.
How will i show my to-date material cost against my initial budget cost after
each month? Basically i just want to show how much of the budget money we
spent after each month, percentage whise or just in $ amounts.

I think i will have to insert a colum somewhere (text1 or something like
that) and instert the number i got from excel each month.

 

[John]

Thanks again John

Im new to this program, but i will use hyperlink to track my incoming
invoices.

Now after each month my material cost for a certain task will be increasing.
How will i show my to-date material cost against my initial budget cost after
each month? Basically i just want to show how much of the budget money we
spent after each month, percentage whise or just in $ amounts.

I think i will have to insert a colum somewhere (text1 or something like
that) and instert the number i got from excel each month.

shawn,
I think your idea of using a spare text (or cost) field to hold the
monthly update of invoices from Excel is a good one. You could link the
Excel data to Project, but links have a tendency to result in corruption
and since you are a new user of Project, I think you are better off
avoiding links. For a small number of data points you could use copy and
paste. If you do have a large number, you might consider using an import
map to get the data from Excel to Project. You can read the Project help
file on how to set up export/import maps.

John
Project MVP