actual work showing up on dates in the future from the status date

[osucowboy]

On a weekly basis I:
1) key the actual hours resources worked into the schedule
2) set the project status date to the new date (one week out)
3) update project selecting the "reschedule uncompleted work to start after"
and "entire project" radio buttons and accept the default date which is the
new project status date

Here's the question:
Why does MS Project sometimes show actual work in the future from the status
date? I do not key hours in the future. Does anyone know a valid reason why
this would occur, or is there an option in MS Project that is causing this?

Thanks in advance.
Some of the tasks are fixed work, some are fixed duration. I am using 2002
professional.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Do you enter %complete?
That dos not take status date into account and can create actual work in the
future.
HTH

 

[osucowboy]

We do not key %complete unless the task is 100% complete and needs to be
closed, however, we zero out remaining work first, then set %complete to 100.

Otherwise, we key actual work and MS Project updates the %complete. I've
experimented with very small plans and cannot re-produce the problem.

Any more ideas?

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

As Jan said, Project doesn't know anything about the status date or current
date when updating work on a task. I create a project with a start date of
30 Aug. I enter a task with 5 days duration and assign Fred to it. Now
today, 6pm on 31 Aug, I enter that 24 hours of work has been done and set
the remaining work is 8 hours. Project happily enters work as being done
through tomorrow, 1 September, with 1 day remaining and it sets the task as
being 75% complete. It doesn't know that as of the time of my updates 01
Sept is still in the future - I told it 24 hours of work has been done
starting 30 Aug and that's what it recorded, it's up to me to insure I'm
giving it accurate information.