Need help tracking Actual Hours

[Dawn]

I have a project plan I am responsible for maintaining. I receive updates on
from several PMO's with estimated hours planned start and finished dates, and
as the projects progress actual hours and actual start and finished dates.
We are using this as a High level status tool for a very large 3 year Master
Project made up of many Children projects and hundreds of projects.

The issue I am having is when a task is completed and I enter the Actaul
Finish Date, the % Completed field automaticly changes to 100% and the Actual
Work field is over riden with the hours entered in the amount in the Work
field. I am entering the estimated hours into the Work field.

If I go back and re-enter the Actual Work field the % Complete adjusts and
the Actual Finish date is removed.

I have set the Type to Fixed Work for all tasks. We are not concerned about
the % Complete field but rather we are using the % work field. Also I enter
the Actual Work field.

Can any one help?

 

[Project Slave]

Compare actual work with baseline work, then you don't need to worry about %
complete and % work complete.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

If an [Actual Finish] date exists for a task then by definition all of the
work on it has been completed, has it not? And if it's completed it's 100%
complete. The [Work] field holds how much work it is *forecast* to take to
finish the task if it hasn't been done yet and how much work it *did* take
to finish it if it is completed - it is not a static record of the initial
estimate but rather a calculated amount of what was or will be required.
The only time the task is finished is when [Actual Work] >= [Work]. Posting
an [Actual Work] > [Work] will result in the [Work] field being recalculated
so it equals the Actual. But if the [Actual Work] is then edited to read
less than the [Work] field, the [Work] does *not* get recalculated again to
the lower value and again by definition there is still work to be done and
the task hasn't finished. The BASELINE Work is the field that holds the
original planned work and at any time, including after completion, both
[Work] and [Actual Work] can be less than, equal to, or greater than the
[Baseline Work]. Thus the Baseline is where you should be looking for your
projected values.

Just out of curiosity, why have you set all the tasks to "fixed work?" Not
that it might not be true some of the time but the task type should always
be a reflection of reality. If you have Joe assigned to a task with a
duration of 2 weeks and then he comes back to you and says "You know, I
think that's going to take me 3 weeks instead" wouldn't that usually mean
the total man-hours that the task is expected to take should be revised
upwards? If I go update the duration of a fixed work task from 2 weeks to 3
weeks in response to Joe's memo, its total work estimate won't change
(that's what "fixed" means). Instead it will show Joe now has a few hours
free time every day that can be assigned to other things which I doubt is an
accurate picture of reality.