Unburdened, burdened costs and price in MS Project

[Brad Ems]

The company I work for is considering moving from a custom MS Excel
spreadsheet for project estimation to MS Project. I've been tasked with
evaluating this potential move. I can see great utility in providing the
time dimension to project managers of successful jobs, but I am also
encountering what seems to me a bewildering limitation in Project.

Specifically, there seems to be no inherent way to calculate price aside
from creating a copy of the "cost" version of the project file and
re-entering the pricing rates into the resource table. Alternately, one can
enter the unburdened, burdened and pricing information into each resource's
cost table, but this also limits the usefulness of the application as one A -
cannot see side-by-side comparisons of costs versus price (and the resultant
profit margin) B - must go into the Task Usage view and change all resource
rates depending on which estimate is desired at any moment.

Custom fields seem to be local-only...pulling rate data from the Resource
Table isn't possible within the context of the Task Table, where the task
durations reside. What I am wanting to do is to include another column in my
Gantt/Task Usage views that will do exactly what the current "Cost" column
does, but will pull work and rate data from different fields.

Is there some way to do this within Project's existing structure? Thanks to
any and all that can assist.

BWE

 

[Jack Dahlgren]

The answer is to use a bit of project VBA to figure this and have it put the
results in a custom field. It shouldn't be too difficult to do this. With
VBA most of the limitations of project can be overcome.

-Jack Dahlgren

 

[Brad Ems]

Thanks, Jack. I'm not sure my firm will be too interested in VB add-ons, as
this will ultimately become a maintenance issue over all of our domestic and
international locations. With all of the utilities and functions in MSP2003,
I'm a little surprised this isn't something that is a standard feature.

 

[John]

Thanks, Jack. I'm not sure my firm will be too interested in VB add-ons, as
this will ultimately become a maintenance issue over all of our domestic and
international locations. With all of the utilities and functions in MSP2003,
I'm a little surprised this isn't something that is a standard feature.

Brad,
Project is neither a spreadsheet nor an accounting application, it is a
scheduling application. Therefore, the ability to calculate and display
various aspects of cost, price and profit are not built in. As Jack
said, some fairly simply VBA can enhance the cost flexibility, but it
still won't make Project an accounting application or spreadsheet.

John
Project MVP

 

[Brad Ems]

Understood, yet Project already combines resource rates and work durations to
provide task and overall project cost, so it's clear that there is no
technical barrier to combining fields from the Resource and Task tables. I'd
just like to be able to do that outside of the single instance that MS
provides in the "Cost" field on a custom basis. After all, given that there
are an additional ten fields called "Cost 1-10," doesn't it make sense that
they would be able to actually function like the "Cost" field instead of
simple number fields with dollar signs tacked on?

 

[John]

Understood, yet Project already combines resource rates and work durations to
provide task and overall project cost, so it's clear that there is no
technical barrier to combining fields from the Resource and Task tables. I'd
just like to be able to do that outside of the single instance that MS
provides in the "Cost" field on a custom basis. After all, given that there
are an additional ten fields called "Cost 1-10," doesn't it make sense that
they would be able to actually function like the "Cost" field instead of
simple number fields with dollar signs tacked on?

Brad,
You're right, there is no technical reason why task and resource data
cannot be combined, in fact, that is exactly how Project manipulates the
three parts of its database. You might want to go to our MVP website at:
http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm and read FAQ 51 - Data Types: Task,
Resource and Assignment

With regard to the ten spare cost fields, it might interest you to know
that there are actually 30 spare cost fields - 10 for tasks, 10 for
resources, and 10 for assignments, and they are all independent.

And no, it doesn't necessarily make sense that spare fields should
function like standard Project fields. Many of Project's basic fields
(e.g. Duration, Start, Finish, Cost, etc.) are dynamic. Their values may
be either manually entered by the user or may be calculated by Project's
scheduling algorithms. On the other hand, spare fields are static,
(except when customized with a formula), and are intended for user
convenience. They may contain data of many types and for many purposes.
Therefore it does not make sense that they should be constrained by
defined calculation algorithms. They can however be customized with user
defined formulas or through VBA, which is what Jack suggested previously.

No doubt about it, Project (and any other application) does not have all
the functionality that every user wants. However, it is configured to
provide the best balance of standard features and customization for a
planning and scheduling application.

Hopefully, this clarifies some things.

John
Project MVP