Clarity

CA-PPM Version : 14.3

Can someone share the industry best practice for managing Rate Matrix?

Should we create new Rate Matrix line entry even if there is no change in the existing rate matrix (Rate or Class)?  For example:  Contractor "A" has the start date of 1/1/2017 and finish date of 12/31/2017 with the rate of $20.  

Option#1:  Extend the finish date to 12/31/2018

Option#2: Create new rate matrix record for the period 1/1/2018 to 12/31/2018 and keep the same rate.

What is the best practice?

I have few other questions:

1. Is there any impact, if a resource is deactivated but the rate matrix is entered for future dates?
2. Should we update the Rate 'finish date' to the resource 'termination date' when the contract is terminated?

Thanks

-Venkitta

Hi Venkitta,

Official documentation on this topics, hope this will help you answer the questions you have 

Set Up a Financial Cost and Rate Matrix - CA PPM - 14.2 - CA Technologies Documentation 

Technical Document - CA PPM: How should the rate matrix be configured? 

Regards

Suman Pramanik 

Thanks Suman for sharing the documentation links. 

Actually, I would like to hear from other people who work for various customers and share their experience/recommendations.

Thanks

-Venkitta 

Hi Venkitta, 

I am trying to provide you suggestion accordingly: 

Should we create new Rate Matrix line entry even if there is no change in the existing rate matrix (Rate or Class)?  For example:  Contractor "A" has the start date of 1/1/2017 and finish date of 12/31/2017 with the rate of $20.  

Option#1:  Extend the finish date to 12/31/2018

Option#2: Create new rate matrix record for the period 1/1/2018 to 12/31/2018 and keep the same rate.

Both the ways are fine. But it depends on how you usually maintain all the rates in your organization. If you want to have rates for individual years then go with option 2. One good thing of this is all your rates will be based on the calendar/fiscal years. And a disadvantage would be that you will be having more number of rows unnecessary.

So if you want to track rates only based on the value of rates or only track the changes then you can use the existing row and extend the finish date that is follow option 1. 

Thanks,

Abhisek Dhar

Hi Venkitta, 

Your other questions: 

Ques 1. Is there any impact, if a resource is deactivated but the rate matrix is entered for future dates?

Answer: No, I don't think that there will be any negative impacts because once the resource will cross its termination date, he will not be able to report time in the PPM, I believe.  

Ques 2. Should we update the Rate 'finish date' to the resource 'termination date' when the contract is terminated?

Answer: Not needed. But by this question, I wonder if you are having individual rates for individual resources. You can do that for few resources, but if you are doing that for all the resources then it is not at all a good practice. You will create load on the Rate Matrix. Try to assign rates based on the departments, resource class, roles etc. to optimize the rate matrix definitions. 

Thanks,

Abhisek Dhar

Hi Venkita,

Based on the limited information available in the scenario that you have shared and assuming that the resource's information can only be derived from the row in question, I would recommend option #1. When it comes to Rate Matrix, you want to keep it as simple as possible. The lesser the number of rows, the better it is. 

Re: your questions: 

1. Is there any impact, if a resource is deactivated but the rate matrix is entered for future dates?

   Could you please elaborate on the kind of impacts you are concerned about? Let me try and answer some questions    that could arise:

      1) From a Financial Planning standpoint the Inactive resources will be accounted for when updating a cost plan.             Here is an article that talks about how inactive resources are treated when populating a cost plan - CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: How Do Inactive Resources Affect Cost Plan Populate 

      2) Inactive resources cannot be used for posting actual costs. A lot of customers have to account for this when their          resource deactivation may not be aligned with their cost/time processing. 

      3) The use of Termination date will require a different post to explain  However, for your benefit, the termination          date affects the ability to enter time, availability of the resource and a resource's allocation to a project. Here is a             thread that may help - CA Clarity Tuesday Tip - Hire Date, Termination Date – What they do! 

      4) To your specific question on whether the "Termination Date" should be aligned with the "To" date in the rate          matrix - No need to do that at all. You just need to take into account #1,  #2 and #3 as part of your routine          operations for handling resource turnover. 

Hope the explanation helps. 

Thanks,

Regards,

Debroop

Thanks Debroop for the detailed response.  

Should we clean up rate matrix for the terminated contractors or leave as it is?  When I run the Rate matrix job, does it include inactive resources also or only active resources?

I have not seen terminated contractors being removed from rate cards. Plus there could be implications to doing that. Not sure about the Rate Matrix job.