Earned Value - Entering Costs

[Hopeful_1]

I finally mastered the planned and earned cost in order to produce earned
value reports on a monthly basis. Our client has asked that we start tracking
actual costs and I have no clue where to start. I read many of the posts and
it has helped me a lot. However, I'm confused because I the planned cost are
entered at the beginning of the project then I have costs by the contractor
who provides the costs 14 days prior to the start of construction. How do do
I enter the costs provided by the contractors bid and be able to create a
Planned, Earned, and Actual earned value report?

 

[Jim Aksel [MVP]]

What your contractor has given you 14 days prior to the start of
construction is not actual cost.
Actual costs are things like time card charges, and receipts for lumber,
nails, and plywood.

The contractor may tell you $50 which is $14 for plywood, $6 for nails and
$30 for labor. These are budget costs.
You will know the real costs when he throws the receipts on the table.

In project, Tools/Options Calculations tab. Change the cost calcs by
unchecking the "calculated costs determined by MS Proejct" check boxes.

What you are going to find is that actual costs are accrued at a higher
level than the detail tasks in you project. For example, you will get a
bill from the Carpenter for 40 hours... not 1.6 hours on task A, 2.9 hours
on task B... etc.

We establish a series of tasks that do nothing more than collect actual
costs (against charge numbers). We do not load resources on these tasks.
Instead, we only enter Actual Costs in the Task Usage View for the period of
time in question (we set the time scale to weekly). We enter the costs
weekly.

We also keep track of each job task by assigning an account number to it.
The same account number appears on one of the cost lists. Using custom
group by, we can do earned value by account number only. Schedule variances
are more easily accommodated directly.

Keep in my Project is a scheduling application, not a cost accounting
program.

HTH

Jim Aksel
http://www.msprojectblog.com