In the Project file there are two main sections. The first is for M&S / Travel and the second is for labor costs.
It is very important that you do not alter the column order of this file!
Of all of the columns in this file the 5 that are used for project reporting are the following:
These are the key outputs from this file and will appear in the tracking file and project dashboard.
This column contains the name of the individual item for purchase or the individual scheduled task. It may also contain the name of a sub-group of items or tasks for organizational purposes.
This field is provided for allow the user to add budget planning specific notes related to a particular item. This can be self reminders of how an estimate was generated or can provide further details about what the task or sub group contains.
This field contains either the budgeted number of hours for a given task or the number of components being purchased.
This field contains the fully burdened cost (with overhead) of the item being budgeted. For M&S items this is the cost after applying the M&S overhead factor for a given item. For the Labor section this cost is the fully burdened labor cost for the person being assigned the task. In some cases this cost will vary by job code or which project the task is for.
This is the assigned risk factor for each M&S and Labor item in the planned budget. You should assign the risk based upon your confidence level in the budgeted item. This field is used to compute a contingency factor for each budgeted line item.
This field is where the PM will assign the task to a specific resource.
This field allows the PM to link task start dates based upon a previous task.
This is the start date of a task.
This is true end date of a task or the expected date when M&S purchases will be charged.
This is the duration of a task based upon the Start and End dates.
This is the PA-Number to which the costs associated with this line item should be charged.
This field contains an estimate of how much progress has been made on a given task. This field combined with the Actual Labor Hours Or M&S Cost field is used to determine how far under or over budget a project is. This field should be updated by the PM regularly as the project progresses.
This field computes the percentage of a resource's time is required to complete the task based upon the number of hours required and the planned duration.
This field is the computed cost of the M&S or Labor item based upon unit cost and quantity.
The use of this field changed depending on if it is an M&S or Labor task. For an M&S task this is the actual total cost for the M&S item billed tot he account. For Labor this is the actual number of hours that have been spent on a given task. This in combination with the percentage complete is used to determine the how far under or over budget a project is. This field should be updated regularly by the PM as the project progresses.
This field computes the earned hours of a given item.
This field computes the earned value of a given item. For M&S this earned value is the estimated cost of an item if purchased, for Labor this is the Budgeted Labor Cost multiplied by the percentage complete. In a perfect project the Earned Value would match the total cost of the project.
This is the planned percent complete based upon the task's start and end date compared to the last date of the previous month., assuming the task will have linear progress.
This is the expected earned value of a task using the planned % complete and the total cost for the task.
This is the computed schedule variance comparing the current earned value with the planned earned value for each task. A positive number indicates you are ahead of schedule.
This field contains the computed contingency amount based upon the risk factor assigned to the item.
This is the baselined start date of a task.
This is baselined end date of a task.
This is the schedule variance between the baseline schedule and the current schedule..