Material Costs & Spend Plan

[Judy]

For my project I need to purchase some very expensive items. The quotes for
these items require multiple payments. (For example 1/3 down and remainder
after acceptance).

I want to get an accurate spend plan (i.e what my expected cash flow will be
on a monthly basis).

If I create my purchase as a "material resource" - I can only choose cost
accural at start, prorate or end. Is there any way to enter my cost accural
more accurately than that so I get a clear picture of my spend plan?

 

[Jack Dahlgren]

You can model each of the payments (down payment, acceptance) as separate
material resources and assign them to the different tasks.

Project is always a little awkward when dealing with financial data.

-Jack Dahlgren
http://zo-d.com/blog

 

[Judy]

Thanks Jack - I thought of that, but it seemed really tedious.

What do you recommend for doing a decent spend plan. I love the way Project
tracks cost vs time for human resources - much better than anything I could
do in Excel. I feel like I could do the material spend rate better in Excel.
But then putting to two together would be quite a bit of extra work.

I want to use the right tools for this task so I would be happy to take any
recommendations.

Thanks,

Judy

 

[Jack Dahlgren]

Personally, if it deals with money and the time value of money I'd keep it in
Excel.
Use whichever tool you are most comfortable with.

-Jack

 

[Crook]

Hi All,

I agree with Jack that MS Project is a bit awkward at handling financial
data in a project. However, we are using it to manage a multi-million
dollar program with over 50 separate projects which include many expensive
purchases. We manage the purchases by creating material resources as Judy
does. We then assign a standard rate of $1 per unit to the material
resources. We manage the spend plan by using the task usage view (or
resource usage view I suppose, but I prefer the task usage view) and putting
the planned costs on the date we expect to incur them. Similarly for
invoices, we put actual costs (units) on the day we paid the invoice. It's
not too kludgy once you get used to it and it tracks our material costs over
time within our project plans.

FWIW,
Crook

 

[Wharton Computer Consulting]

Hello Crook,

I think I like what you are doing. So when money is spent on task, you put
the payment into enterprise code or regular project field.

You mention, invoicing; is this linked up with project too?