Clarity

  • 1.  Cost Type Task Inheritance Questions.

    Posted Apr 25, 2017 02:42 PM

    Hope all is well. I have a couple of questions about Cost Type Task Inheritance. We just migrated to using Cost Type instead of Charge Code.

     

    Example (See below screenshot):

    • The Cost Type attribute for the investment is set to Operating.
    • The investment has a parent task/activity (Testing Prep) with a cost type of Operating.
    • The parent task has two children tasks: Task 1/Develop Test Cases has a cost type of Operating and Task 2/Test op 2 has no cost type selected.

     

    1. In this case, Develop Test Cases has Operating specified. Shouldn’t Test op 2 inherit the cost type Operating from its parent task? 
    2.  Also will the UI populate the Task (Test op 2) with the parents charge code. 
    3. How does this appear on BOXI report for the Task 2/Test op 2 (WBS Level 2)? Will it be blank, or populated with Level Task 1/Develop Test Cases value (same as WIP transaction screen)?

     

    WBS Example

     

    Thank you,

     

    Michael Norman

    Solution Consultant

     

    Kaiser Permanente

    Ten Piedmont Center
    3495 Piedmont Road
    Atlanta, Georgia 30305

    470.201.9010 (mobile)

     

     



  • 2.  Re: Cost Type Task Inheritance Questions.

    Posted May 02, 2017 12:28 PM

    Michael:

    1. For transaction purposes (what is shown in WIP, and how it shows in cost aggregations), the transactions for Test op 2 will inherit the cost type of the parent task, and be classified as Operating.  The Cost Type field on the Test op 2 task will remain blank, as it is not necessary to fill that field to establish inheritance.

    2. The UI does not populate the child task Cost Type field from the parent value.

    3. Reports that show the Task attributes, such as the one you included will have the Cost Type field blank.  You will need to look at the value in the parent Task to see what the implied value is for the child tasks.  Reports that show Costs associated with transactions (or planned costs) will show the cost type that is inherited from the parent task - Operating in your use case.

     

    Where you absolutely need to see the explicit value of the Cost Type at the child task level based on the value in the Parent Task, you can use a workflow process to populate any Child Task's Cost Type that is blank with the value of the Parent Task Cost Type.



  • 3.  Re: Cost Type Task Inheritance Questions.

    Posted May 15, 2017 04:44 PM

    Thanks this is very helpful