Actuals changing without reason

[Maria Pabon]

In Project Professional 2002

I try to capture hours on a daily basis and enter them on the actual work field. If I update the task percentage (for instance), it will change the actuals. This does not make sense, the fact that I think the %complete is different than the calculated does not change the actual value, it changes the estimated work, the duration, etc but not the actuals. (switching the calculation switch about updating resource status when task status changes seems to help but there is no reason to change actual time reported

In another case, I added a new resource to a task and this resource started with some actual hours already. This problems do not allow me to use project to double check time reporting and require me to have additional spreadsheets keeping track of resource time

 

[Gary L. Chefetz \(MVP\)]

Maria:

The tool is behaving exactly as it was designed. What you need to do is
master the basics of the tool. You can control work, units and duration. You
set two and project calculates the third, keeping in mind that the software
has a bias to not change units whenever possible.

If you have a task with 1 day duration and two hours of work, when you
adjust the percent complete to 50% , project changes the actual work to one
hour. So in the first case you present, if you want to change duration and
work without changing percent complete, then you must adjust one or both of
those to get your desired results.

In the second case, you added a resource to a task that was already at some
percent complete. If you simply add the resource without "properly
controlling the work value" the new resource will inherit its percentage of
work and actual work.

A good course on Microsoft Project basics will get you over this hump!

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
"We wrote the book on Project Server
http://www.msprojectexperts

In Project Professional 2002:

I try to capture hours on a daily basis and enter them on the actual work

field. If I update the task percentage (for instance), it will change the
actuals. This does not make sense, the fact that I think the %complete is
different than the calculated does not change the actual value, it changes
the estimated work, the duration, etc but not the actuals. (switching the
calculation switch about updating resource status when task status changes
seems to help but there is no reason to change actual time reported.

In another case, I added a new resource to a task and this resource

started with some actual hours already. This problems do not allow me to use
project to double check time reporting and require me to have additional
spreadsheets keeping track of resource time.