NON-LABOR expenses - EPM

[Charlie]

I have a question about using the Enterprise Project Management Solution in
our environment. A&E firm with 500 team members. We average about 2000
project a year. All project reporting to upper management and the client is
done via Earned Value charts and graphs so we need period reporting for all
LABOR and NON-LABOR.

We’re looking at using Enterprise Project Management Solution for the
additional Project Portfolio Server and Project Web Access modules. Project
Portfolio Server for the total firm project status reporting capabilities.
And Project Web Access for time (LABOR) and expense (NON-LABOR) entry by time
period on tasks. In our case daily.

QUESTION: How do we baseline our Microsoft Project expenses (NON-LABOR) by
time period on tasks - in our case daily? Our NON-LABOR expenses consist of
company credit card charges (airfare, lodging, taxi, rental car, gas and
parking), other credit card charges (less than $2,500 that don’t go through
procurement), subcontractor charges (that go through procurement), and travel
voucher charges (daily per diem, etc.).

QUESTION: How do we get our NON-LABOR expenses to be entered by each of our
team members through Project Web Access? I see how we enter LABOR, but not
expenses through the interface.

Thank you,
- Charlie

 

[Ben Howard]

Hi Charlie,
The 1st thing to remember is that EPM is primarily a resouce and scheduling
tool, rather than a cost tracking tool. Having said that, it is possible to
enter project costs of travel expenses against a project , but not via PWA,
it is done manually by the PM (against a cost resource in the resource usage
view).

I would proably use a combination of EPM for the labour, and develop a
separate DB for tracking expenses etc, and then combine the two to give the
reports required.

 

[Charlie]

Hi Ben,

THANK YOU for your response.

Unfortunately, our current scenario is that we do have custom app’s for
NON-LABOR expenses (one for company credit card charges, one for non-travel
credit card charges , one for subcontractor charges and one for travel
voucher charges)(don’t ask). Because of the internal workflow processes
needed for approvals it can take more than 120 days for various actuals to
show up. In addition, we have a custom app for resourcing and scheduling!!!
Oh boy. We’re spending incredible amounts on Oracle DBA’s and report writer
FTE’s to combine all the needed data for reporting and Earned Value analysis
for management and our clients.

This all leads to a very NON user-friendly front end(s) for entering LABOR
and NON-LABOR for each team member. So we’re looking for solutions that
would enable each of the 500 team members to use a single front-end solution
for ease of use – novel concept Huh?

Do you, or anyone else, have experience with Microsoft Dynamics SL in this
situation? Is this something we should look at if we need a single user
interface for team members? We were hoping Microsoft’s EPM could help with
our situation and keep us from a full-blown proprietary Project Portfolio
Management solution like Primavera or Plan View.

Thanks ahead,
- Charlie

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Charlie:

Yes it can happen, but not without some integration work, and possibly an
add-on or two. Given both the complexity of your requirements and scale of
your organization, I think this discussion needs more than a newsgroup post
could possible convey. I think this is something worth exploring, but I
think you should expect to work with a capable consultant/architect for a
week or more to reach a solid "can we do it" and "is it worth it" decision.
I would expect that organizational politics might be a much larger challenge
for you than the technology piece.

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
For Project Server Consulting: http://www.msprojectexperts.com
For Project Server FAQS: http://www.projectserverexperts.com