Automatically record actual overtime

[Mel]

Is there any way to have Project automatically place actual overtime
into the field based on the value typed into actual work. For instance
if I record 10 hours of actual work, and anything over 8 hours is
deemed overtime, is there anyway to have Project automatically take any
hours over 10 (2 in this case) and place them into actual overtime?
Thanks in advance.

 

[davegb]

Is there any way to have Project automatically place actual overtime
into the field based on the value typed into actual work. For instance
if I record 10 hours of actual work, and anything over 8 hours is
deemed overtime, is there anyway to have Project automatically take any
hours over 10 (2 in this case) and place them into actual overtime?
Thanks in advance.

No, there isn't. The reason is, Project doesn't know whether this was
OT or just extra time worked during normal business hours. You have to
tell it which it was.
Hope this helps in your world.

 

[Mel]

Is this a potential calculation that could be done in vba?

 

[davegb]

Is this a potential calculation that could be done in vba?

I don't think so. What is there to calculate? When you enter the hours,
you have to tell Project how many of them are OT. What would a macro
do? Guess at how many are OT?
If I tell Project that a task will take 8 hrs, and then I enter 10, how
would the software know that 2 of those are OT, not just extra hours
taken during work hours? You'd still have to tell it. It could be that
5 of those 10 were regular hours, and 5 were OT. You tell it by
entering them as OT.
I guess you might be able to create and event driven VBA program to
interpret that everytime you entered more hours than the original
estimate, it should make the overage OT. Of course, when a task took
longer than planned and you worked the additional hours in regular
time, you'd have to override the macro somehow. Doesn't sound like much
of an improvement to me.
My question is, why do you not want to enter the OT?
Hope this helps in your world.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Yes it is.
You will have to get familiar with the Timescaledata method and decide
whatis the standard number of hours: taken form the options or from the
resource's calendar..

HTH

 

[Mel]

Well I was looking at a situation where any actual work value that was
greater than 8 hours--Project would automatically enter the overage
value in the actual overtime column. So no, to answer your question,
Project would not "guess how many hours were overtime". This would be
a very unique type of project where the rules are rather strict
regarding the payout of overtime.

I was just looking for a way to have Project perhaps eliminate the one
portion of the data entry. I do understand your point, you are looking
at the normal way to tell Project to pay out overtime. I understand
how to do that. To answer your second comment, I suppose I was just
looking to cut out an additional data entry step in the hopes that
Project may actually do something automatically. For instance in Access
or Excel, we can handle this logic with If, Then Else types of
statements and I didn't know if that was something Project was capable
of.

 

[Rod Gill]

Project can do it, but only in custom fields. Let's say you do 4 hours on
one task in a day and 6 on another. Which task should be charged the
overtime, one or both or none? There are way too many variables and other
scenarios where Project running on a computer with an IQ of zero could never
get the Overtime correct.

You could have a blanket VBA macro that went through every day for a
nominated resource and set to overtime all hours >8. That would of course
reduce durations and then you get another round of difficulties!!

 

[davegb]

Well I was looking at a situation where any actual work value that was
greater than 8 hours--Project would automatically enter the overage
value in the actual overtime column. So no, to answer your question,
Project would not "guess how many hours were overtime". This would be
a very unique type of project where the rules are rather strict
regarding the payout of overtime.

If you're entering the Actual hours of work in the Task Usage or
Resource Usage tables, this might be possible if Project VBA has an
event for such an entry. But you'd probably be creating more problems
than you solved. For the moment, let's assume Project VBA has that
capability. You'd have to enter your hours on a daily basis, something
I rarely reccommend. My experience is that people who track on a daily
basis have almost invariably lost sight of the big picture, which is
what a PM is supposed to be concerned with. There are lots of people on
the project who should concern themselves with who did what when on a
short term basis. If the PM has done his/her job, those people will
most likely be doing theirs. There is only one person responsible for
the overall project. If s/he isn't doing it, no one is. You can't
manage the overall project and micro-manage it at the same time.
Entering hours on a daily basis is micro-management. All the PM should
care about in most cases is that, at the end of the week, the planned
progress has been achieved. If you're worrying about what Sam is doing
at 2:15 Tues afternoon, you're in big trouble.
As for your project's uniqueness concerning OT, there's nothing unique
at all about not paying OT. Very few companies pay OT anymore, whether
it's still in the company manual or just been eliminated entirely. You
need to be sure no one's working it without correct permissions. But
tracking it in Project is another issue entirely.
It sounds to me like you may have, like many PM's, lost track of the
real reasons for planning and scheduling. It's not to keep track of
every little detail on the project. It's to know where the project is,
and where it appears to be going, and to keep it in alignment with the
stated purpose. If you're spending this much time worrying about having
to enter the admittedly very rare occurences of OT, you've forgotten
your primary purpose as a PM.
Hope this helps in your world.