Expense Resource Scenario
For an Expense Resource, the outcome of the 'Populate Cost Plan by Task Assignment' is a bit different than a Labor resource.
If you put in some ETC hours and post some Actual units and Actual Cost, the populate by assignment will use the 'number' of expense resources for the 'Planned Units' and use the '(ETC Hours x Actual Hours) multiplied by the 'actual cost rate' defined on the live rate matrix.
Example : Project has 1 expense resource assigned to 1 task with the following data:
Sep 14: ETC Units = 0, Actual Units = 1
Oct 14: ETC Units = 1, Actual Units = 3 (total = 4 units)
Nov 14: ETC Units = 2, Actual Units = 0
Dec 14: ETC Units = 3, Actual Units = 0
Rate Matrix has $25.25 for 'Actual Cost Rate' field
Create a cost plan, populate by task assignment
Sep 14: Planned Units = 1 expense resource, Planned Cost = 1 unit * 25.25 = 25.25
Oct 14: Planned Units = 1 expense resource, Planned Cost = 4 units * 25.25 = 101.00 (1 ETC unit + 3 Actual units)
Nov 14: Planned Units = 1 expense resource, Planned Cost = 2 units * 25.25 = 50.50
Dec 14: Planned Units = 1 expense resource, Planned Cost = 3 units * 25.25 = 75.75
Add another resource to the same project with specific ETC units for each month - no actuals have been posted yet.
Create a cost plan, populate by task assignments and you will now see for each month, the 'Planned Units' = 2 expense resources
And the Planned Cost is updated by the total number of units added for each period
NOTE: Because the 'Actual Cost' amount is not the same as the matrix, the 'planned cost' does not match the 'actual cost' for posted transactions.