Clarity

  • Private Community
Back to discussions
Expand all | Collapse all

cost in Financial plan for non labor resources

  • 1.  cost in Financial plan for non labor resources

    Posted Jun 21, 2013 04:33 AM
      |   view attached
    Hi All,

    We are planning to use financial plans for budgeting purpose for our organization. But we are facing issues regarding non labor resources cost. The problem is that we can’t have any fixed cost for non labor resources (like Travel) so we can’t define the rate/cost matrix for this. what we decided is to create a fields under project tasks where project managers can put some estimated cost of travel e.g. For Task “project planning” total travel cost is 10000 EUR. Once all cost defined and labor resources has been assigned to task then by using “New from resource plan” ->Assignments, these costs somehow reflect in cost plan as well along with assignments. Please help me regarding this. if anyone know any other approach to fulfill this requirement. Please let me know.
    Kind regard,
    Satish


  • 2.  RE: cost in Financial plan for non labor resources

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Jun 21, 2013 04:42 AM
    Satish,
    don't know if I understand your requirement. Do you mean that the total cost of travel should be splitted by periods based on resource assignments?
    In this case I don't see any other way that use a gel script to create the travel cost item.
    Fabio


  • 3.  RE: cost in Financial plan for non labor resources

    Posted Jun 21, 2013 04:55 AM
    I'm not sure I understand your requirement either. I'm particularly confused by:

    sku029 wrote:

    The problem is that we can’t have any fixed cost for non labor resources (like Travel) so we can’t define the rate/cost matrix for this.
    Why can't you have a rule in your matrix that sets the rate to be 1 EUR for each unit of effort for any resources where resource class = non labour (or however you define non resource) ? This is what we do in my organisation. A PM can then estimate travel costs in the same was estimating resource effort. Financial plans populated from the schedule/resource plan will pick this up for you and split the cost by whatever grouping you define in the cost plan.


  • 4.  RE: cost in Financial plan for non labor resources

    Posted Jun 21, 2013 05:31 AM
    "Why can't you have a rule in your matrix that sets the rate to be 1 EUR for each unit of effort for any resources where resource class = non labour (or however you define non resource) ? ... A PM can then estimate travel costs in the same was estimating resource effort. Financial plans populated from the schedule/resource plan will pick this up for you and split the cost by whatever grouping you define in the cost plan. " - Agree with Owen on this

    NJ


  • 5.  RE: cost in Financial plan for non labor resources

    Posted Jun 26, 2013 06:50 AM
    Hi NJ/Owen,

    Thanks for your reply. I proposed this solution to requesters but they said it is bit confusing for them as they have to assign non labor resources(e.g. Travel) in hours at task so that those can be converted into EUR(based on rule of 1 EUR/hour) once it be picked in cost plan. what they insisting on is to have some fields under tasks (e.g. Travel, Material and expense ect.) and project manger will just fill the estimated figures againest those fields. Then these fields aggregation(e.g. 10 EUR for Travel for 10 tasks each = 100 EUR for Travel) should be visible in cost plan as a one row like Labor resources. also if possible data should be visible per period in against these header(e.g. Travel - Total(100 EUR) | Jan (20 EUR) | Feb (40 EUR) | Mar (40 EUR). I know it can be possible by using GEL script(Also mentioned by Fabio) but not having any exect idea. Guys, please help me if somebody created any GEL script on this. Also, please suggest me if you have any other ideas.

    Many thanks


  • 6.  RE: cost in Financial plan for non labor resources

    Posted Jun 26, 2013 01:56 PM

    navzjoshi00 wrote:

    "Why can't you have a rule in your matrix that sets the rate to be 1 EUR for each unit of effort for any resources where resource class = non labour (or however you define non resource) ? ... A PM can then estimate travel costs in the same was estimating resource effort. Financial plans populated from the schedule/resource plan will pick this up for you and split the cost by whatever grouping you define in the cost plan. " - Agree with Owen on this

    NJ
    Agree with everyone else that this is the most widely used solution.

    If you are going to have to put something on the task anyway, I don't understand how this solution becomes anymore confusing than creating a custom field to capture the estimated amount.

    If you have a non-labor resource called "Travel" it becomes quite obvious what that is for.


  • 7.  RE: cost in Financial plan for non labor resources

    Posted Jun 26, 2013 01:56 PM

    navzjoshi00 wrote:

    "Why can't you have a rule in your matrix that sets the rate to be 1 EUR for each unit of effort for any resources where resource class = non labour (or however you define non resource) ? ... A PM can then estimate travel costs in the same was estimating resource effort. Financial plans populated from the schedule/resource plan will pick this up for you and split the cost by whatever grouping you define in the cost plan. " - Agree with Owen on this

    NJ
    Agree with everyone else that this is the most widely used solution.

    If you are going to have to put something on the task anyway, I don't understand how this solution becomes anymore confusing than creating a custom field to capture the estimated amount.

    If you have a non-labor resource called "Travel" it becomes quite obvious what that is for.


  • 8.  RE: cost in Financial plan for non labor resources

    Posted Jun 27, 2013 03:07 AM
    Good point Rob - "If you are going to have to put something on the task anyway, I don't understand how this solution becomes anymore confusing than creating a custom field to capture the estimated amount."

    What Kathryn has mentioned -
    "Typicially customers use the approach already stated.
    Create a 1 EUR Cost rate in the Matrix for Non-Labor Resources
    Allocate and Assign the non-labor resources to the project plan
    When the cost plan is populated, the planned units will reflect the number of non-labor resources and the planned cost amount will reflect the allocation or assignment values multiplied by 1.
    And when actuals are posted to the financials for the non-labor assignment, the cost plan will also include this information.
    Thus all information related to planning and actuals are in one place.
    If the project manager is not ready to add the non-labor resources to the project plan, after creating the cost plan using the populate method, they can manually add line items on a cost plan to show what they plan. "

    Also, you are not creating any extra attribute to track this... :smile, if you agree

    You can have n number of approaches, and you need to choose the best possible (that suits your business requirements). So, it would be upto Satish to decide what best fits the requirement (we can only suggest - I might be wrong as well)

    NJ


  • 9.  RE: cost in Financial plan for non labor resources

    Posted Jun 28, 2013 05:12 AM
    I understand your PMs might at first find it a bit different - e.g. when I add Fred to a task I have to think in Hours but when I add Travel to a task I have to think in Euros - but I would still go down the matrix route above, and spend the effort on educating them and developing any necessary support materials rather than developing a monster GEL process!

    You don't say what scheduler you use, but what we found worked well in Open Workbench was to push out a specific view to support estimating non-labour effort - essentially a timescaled view of the data, by task and assignment, with only the non-labour resources shown. They simply go there and key in their ETCs in £.


  • 10.  RE: cost in Financial plan for non labor resources
    Best Answer

    Posted Sep 27, 2013 06:12 AM
    Hi Owen,

    i totally agree with you but project managers are not in a mood to agree with it. so now we created a process that will create new one row for each field(e.g. travel, material etc.) in cost plan by Xoging the numbers in cost field. although it was a bit complex task but somehow we able to create such script and our PM's are happy now. so now laor resource/roles they assign on task and for no-labor cost they directly put the cost in respective fields and once they click on create from task assignment cost plan will have all costs.


  • 11.  RE: cost in Financial plan for non labor resources

    Posted Dec 04, 2013 01:23 AM

    seemingly silly question 1: would it also be a possible solution satish to show to the pm, a box for EUR entry, and also a box for 'expense type', and when they save it, a background gel converts this to an expense assignment, and a quantity for the assignment too? (cost plans then leverage this assignment done 'indirectly' by gel. might be easier to track than sending it into cost plans directly from configured task's attributes?                      seemingly silly question 2: for the guys that have done the approach of using the expense resource assignment + etc, how have you overcome the counting of this 'quantity' of assignment on the standard views (since it seems to me that many views add all assignment quantity, regardless of labour vs non-labour?) 



  • 12.  RE: cost in Financial plan for non labor resources

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Jun 26, 2013 10:38 AM
    Typicially customers use the approach already stated.
    Create a 1 EUR Cost rate in the Matrix for Non-Labor Resources
    Allocate and Assign the non-labor resources to the project plan
    When the cost plan is populated, the planned units will reflect the number of non-labor resources and the planned cost amount will reflect the allocation or assignment values multiplied by 1.
    And when actuals are posted to the financials for the non-labor assignment, the cost plan will also include this information.
    Thus all information related to planning and actuals are in one place.
    If the project manager is not ready to add the non-labor resources to the project plan, after creating the cost plan using the populate method, they can manually add line items on a cost plan to show what they plan.


  • 13.  RE: cost in Financial plan for non labor resources

    Posted Jun 26, 2013 10:44 AM
    I would suggest manually adding it into the cost plan.
    It's not as elegant, but works well.