Resource Costing - NEED HELP !

[Doug Carter - Sarnia, ON]

I am new at MS Project and I am having difficulty utilizing calenders for
different resources in conjunction with their claendar. I need to create
different working shifts for my projects. As an example our regular shifts
are 4 - 8 Hr. Days + 4 Hrs (36 Reg. Hrs), 5 - 8 Hr Days (40 Reg. Hrs), 6 - 8
Hr. Days (40 Reg Hr. + 8
Hrs. Prem. Time) and 6 - 10 Hr. Days (8 Hrs. Reg. + 2 Prem per Day and Prem
Hrs for all of Saturday). I have been entering the premium hrs. manually
through the Window Split / Resource Work Window under O/T but this has become
very labour intensive as I have four ongoing projects with 152, 345, 86 and
600 men working on them. Is there any way to configure MS Project 2003 to
calulate these automatically. I have 16 different Trades (Resources) that
can all be working on most of the projects. I will still have to enter any
"O/T" they work but that would only be 100 - 150 manual enteries per week . .
.. instead of 1000's.

Thanks,

Douglas

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Doug,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

The simple answer is No. Project is designed as a scheduelling engine for
projects and not an accounting program. However, it does allow you
undertake some costing so that some sort of budget can be formulated and
watched. The regular hours shifts are straightforward, it is the Premium
hours that are your problem. Overtime entries just ignore the those
manhours when scheduelling and Project give you the option of costing
overtime as you describe. My advice to remember that the cost rate figures
you enter in the Resource Information dialog are not the wages, but the cost
to the company of using that resource (including overheads, holidays,
sikness, training, pensions, etc) Thus, I would put in a rate that gives an
average of regular plus premium costs and go with that. In the long run,
you probably won't be far off target, and you can always amend the figures
as you go along if you realise you have grossly over or under estimated
these rates.

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

 

[Doug Carter - Sarnia, ON]

Thanks Mike,

I requested the resource(s) costing detail from our "Accounting Group" the
other day, just in case that was the only way to go. I was hoping that it
wasn't as some of our projects can have very, very small margins when it
comes to Budget vs Real Time Costs.

Thanks again,

Douglas

 

[Mike Glen]

You're welcome, Doug, and good luck!

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP