Tracked fixed costs in a timephased manner

[Michael Hansen]

Hello

I have a scenario where I have the following example schedule:
- Software Acquisition
-- ERP Purchase Cost
-- ERP Annual Maintenance
-- BI Purchase Cost
-- BI Annual Maintenance
-- Consulting Services
-- Annual Support
- Design
-- Task 1
-- Task 2
- Develop
-- Task 1
-- Task 2
- etc

All the above tasks within "Software Acquisition" have a fixed cost and a
material resource associated to it. I would like to be able to enter actual
costs against these tasks in timephased manner which allows me to consume
costs against the Consulting Services tasks as it takes place. This is for a
time & materials project where we don't have costs associated against the
scoped tasks (e.g., Design, Develop, etc). I then want to be able to feed
this information into some Earned Value Management Analysis all going well.

To sum up, my problem is that I cannot manually enter the actual costs in a
timephased manner as I would expect . When doing so this actually adds
against the total cost and does not reduce the remaining cost. However, using
the 50% Complete button work OK which does not work for what I need for
consulting tasks
taking place on various days.

I hope I have explained my scenario well enough for you.

Regards
Michael Hansen

 

[Michael Hansen]

Hello

I have a scenario where I have the following example schedule:
- Software Acquisition
-- ERP Purchase Cost
-- ERP Annual Maintenance
-- BI Purchase Cost
-- BI Annual Maintenance
-- Consulting Services
-- Annual Support
- Design
-- Task 1
-- Task 2
- Develop
-- Task 1
-- Task 2
- etc

All the above tasks within "Software Acquisition" have a fixed cost and a
material resource associated to it. I would like to be able to enter actual
costs against these tasks in timephased manner which allows me to consume
costs against the Consulting Services tasks as it takes place. This is for a
time & materials project where we don't have costs associated against the
scoped tasks (e.g., Design, Develop, etc). I then want to be able to feed
this information into some Earned Value Management Analysis all going well.

To sum up, my problem is that I cannot manually enter the actual costs in a
timephased manner as I would expect for fixed costs. When doing so this
actually adds against the total cost and does not reduce the remaining cost.
However, using
the 50% Complete button work OK which does not work for what I need for
consulting tasks taking place on various days.

I hope I have explained my scenario well enough for you. I am using Project
2003.

Regards
Michael Hansen

 

[Dave]

How about you don't use Project's fixed cost functionality and you add
your own resource to represent capital expenditure. Then it will appear
as a resource and you will see it as a time-phased expenditure.

Alternatively, how about adding milestones underneath your task and
associating the relevant parts of the expenditure with them.

The problem with these approaches is that the payment schedule may then
drive the task duration which is probably not what you want.

 

[Michael Hansen]

Hi Dave

With the "Software Acquisition" tasks I originally had the resources being
of type Material and 0 duration representing a milestone. With this I simply
wanted to record actual payments made against these tasks when invoiced. I'm
not really concerned with the duration of these tasks as it is only a
mechanism to track payments made and when.

When I record an Actual Cost on day 1, day 2, etc, the Actual Cost field
accumulates which I expect, but the Remaining Cost field does not and remains
zero. I'm not sure why this is the case. Other than this issue this method
should work OK for me. Would you agree Dave? But I am curious about the
remaining cost?

Regards
Michael Hansen

 

[Dave]

Where are you recording the Actual Cost? I would record it by entering
it in the Actual Work field. This works in a test I have just done.

Dave

 

[Michael Hansen]

Hi Dave

I've changed the cost from being Fixed Cost to Per Use against the resource
which now correctly sets the Remaining Cost field. However, entering the
actual cost does not reduce the value in this field, but it increases the
Cost value by this amount.

To enter the Actual Cost, I have gone into the Task Usage view using the
Cost table and entered against the "Act. Cost" field in the timephased
portion of the screen.

I am obviously doing something silly and/or not quite getting it just yet.

Regards
Michael Hansen

 

[Dave]

I'm using Project 2003.

I've created a material resource called material/expenses/capital
whatever you want with a standard rate of 1 and no cost per use.

Then if you create a 10 day task and assign 500 units of your material
resource to it then the cost to that task will be £500.

Now, in the Task Usage view, if you record consumption of that resource
in the work field of the time-phased portion of the table you will see
that if you consume it at a rate of greater than 50 units per day, the
distribution of the expenditure will be pulled in or shortened. This
does reduce the remaining cost.

I can't actually type in the actual cost field of the Task Usage view.