Multiple Resource Rates and billing report limitations

[Mark Akins]

My company is a consulting company that can have a resource assigned to
multiple projects (6 - 10 projects) at the same time and billed at different
rates for each project. MS Project only seems to have rates A – E for a
given enterprise resource (which is not enough). How can we have more rates
for resources? Is this addressed in Project Server 2007?

Additionally, a Resource can bill at different rates for different types of
work (tasks) on the same project. (i.e. software installation and
development). We plan to handle this by using different billing rates for
the tasks. So not only will the number of projects the resource belongs to
affect the number of resource billing rates, but there are multiple rates per
project for the same resource, including non billable.

Last but not least, we will be needing to create billing reports for our
customers and eventually port the data to an accounting program (hopefully
Great Plains Dynamics). Will we need to get a third party add-in to handle
this or does project server provide these abilities? Are these capabilities
available in Project Server 2007? If we need to purchase a third party
add-in what do you recommend?

 

[Hugues Perron]

Hi Mark,

I don't know much about Project Server 2007, but I know there is the new
resource type "Cost". But I don't think it can be usefull for you.

Talking about Project Server 2003, I had a customer with almost the same
problem. I've devlopped a Project's Add-in to change the resource rate
on the fly. The only problem was that the rates or costs in the PWA
views (including the OLAP) were the one specified within the enterprise
global, not the ones specified within the projects. The only way to get
the good cost or rate was using the Project's views or write specific
reports. This was solving the limited number of rates for a resource
(limited to 5) for differents customer. About different rates in the
same project

It's a very complex problem you're addressing and would need some
development to solve it.

If you need more information, feel free to contact me.

Hope this helps

Hugues Perron
http://hperron.net


Mark Akins a écrit :

 

[Matt Steele]

Contact QuantumPM at www.quantumpm.com
They have a billing rate table add-in that allows different resources to
have different billing rates on each project. Very slick. Each project has
its own rate table.

 

[Mark Akins]

Does Project Server 2007 allow for more cost rates per enterprise resource
than A - E or does it have the same cost rate limitations as Project Server
2003?

 

[Matt Steele]

We created a bi-directioanl link to our accounting system also. It was great.
Again, QPM can help there.

 

[Matt Steele]

I think it may, but someone else needs to chime in on that. The downside to
how they handled it currently is not only the limited number of rates, but
the fact that you cannot do math between the cost rate and the 5 other rates.
SO if you want to see time-phased gross margin, you have to go to excel.
QuantumPM's solution allows unlimited billing rates - one for each resource
that can be different in every project and it allows you to calculate in the
schedule, and get a gross margin that is time phased. I hope MS did it this
way in 2007.