Using custom cost fields to track different cost types

[Jeu]

I have a problem with tracking different cost types and reporting on them
(EPM 2007)

The requirement: I have different cost types. e.g a. external costs, b.
Business resource cost, c. IT resource cost, and need to produce executive
project center dashboard views that will show all projects in a portfolio
together with the cost break down at project level. i.e I need columns
showing me the cost types as header and holding the sums at project level.

My attempt: I have created custom enterprise task-level cost fields (rollup:
sum) to hold the different cost types and custom enterprise project-level
cost fields (formula= custom task-level cost) to keep the sum respectively. I
am able to meet the reporting requirements with this approach.

My concern: Task Actual Costs are not populated, thus all out of the box
project server health reports become useless. I also lose all the benefit of
cost baselines, cost variances etc...

Is there a way of having my task Actual Cost take the sum of my different
custom cost types, so that everything out of the box works as they should and
I also meet my reporting requirements?

Please suggest other possible approach, if any. Thanks.

 

[.jussi]

Hello Jeu,

The cost, actual cost and baseline cost for a task are calculated from the
resource cost rates and work. I do not believe there is a way to include
custom fixed cost fields in this calculation.

Now, the intended solution for what you would like to achieve is through the
use of cost resources. With a cost resource you would assign a cost type to
the resource and assign this resource to the task you want to assign the
relevant cost to, then assign a time-phased cost to the resource. You can set
the cost to accrue either at the beginning of the task, and the end or
leveled to the entire task. This would then be properly reflected on the task
and project level baseline and actual costs.

The problem is, the entire cost resource behavior is very undependable at
the moment. I would not recommend using them before there is a clear update
to the cost resource handling in a future service pack.

If despite this you want to try using the cost resources, read the
recommendations that MS gives for using them. And test *thoroughly* in a test
environment, paying special attention to the behavior of realized (tasks
complete) costs when resources submit hours to other seemingly unrelated
tasks.

http://www.epmfaq.com/ssanderlin/pr...rastructure-update-caveats-for-cost-resources

Hope that information is of use to you,

- Jussi