actual work in MS Project

[PeterHSC]

In MS Project, actual work is being recalculated when I enter actual finish
date or 100% completion. How to prevent MS fro recalculating my data? .

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

In Tools Options, on the Calculation tab, clear the checkbox next to
"Updating Task Status Updates Resource Status" and it will sever the
connection between % Complete and Actual Work. But I'd suggest thinking
through the consequences before you do. We have a 5-day task that started
Monday this week, was expected to require 40 man-hours of work by one
resource, and was scheduled to finish this afternoon at 5pm. Instead, we
finished it early, yesterday evening (Thursday) at 5. Isn't it logical that
it actually took 32 man-hours instead of 40 and Project should revise the
work value accordingly? Also, if you just mark a task 100% complete,
Project assumes your original work and duration estimates were correct and
sets the actuals equal to them. If the actuals are not equal to the
estimates, you should manuall enter the Actual Work and Actual Duration
while setting Remaining Work and Remaining Duration to zero.

 

[BGentry]

No it's not logical for Project to revise anything that you are actually
entering and tracking. It really depends on whether you are tracking and
entering resource actual work vs just estimating work and auto-calculating
the actual work indirectly using percenatge complete. For example, we enter
resource actual work every week--these are real timesheet based hours. If
you are NOT careful to first lower the Remaining Work to zero, then change
percentage complete to 100%, Project will add in the remaining work as actual
work which really messes up tracking what really happened. I hope that
helps. It made me feel better...