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Microsoft Project 2010 : Comparing Costs to Your Budget (part 1) - Create and Designate Budget Resources, Assign Budget Resources to the Project Summary Task

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12/9/2012 5:15:51 PM
In planning your departmental retreat, suppose you have specific budget targets for certain cost categories, $2,500 for travel expenses, $500 for printing, and $1,000 for conference room rentals. Using Project's budget resource feature, you can define your budget for different categories of items. You can then group your resources to compare your budgeted costs to your planned costs. This way, you can view your travel budget of $2,500 side by side with your planned costs of, say, $3,700, and immediately see that your next goal is to find a way to trim those travel costs.

Budget resources are great for comparing budgeted costs against the planned costs for cost resources. When it comes to budgeted labor costs, however, it's a different story. For labor and equipment costs (work resources), you can enter only budgeted work amounts, not costs. So instead of a labor budget of $10,000, you have to enter an overall work amount like 200 hours. Knowing what amount of work to enter can be tricky when different work resources all have different cost rates. The box on Comparing Budgeted Labor Costs provides a workaround to this challenge.

This section describes how to set up budget resources to compare to your planned costs and work. This setup is an involved five-step process, summarized as follows:

  1. Create and designate budget resources.

  2. Assign your budget resources to the project summary task.

  3. Enter budgeted cost and work amounts for budget resources.

  4. Associate other types of resources with their budget type.

  5. Group resources to compare budget cost and work alongside the planned values.

The whole process isn't quite as bad as it sounds. If your project is highly cost-driven, then budget resources may give you the budget performance information you need. Take budget resources for a test drive to see if they help.

After you've done the first four steps, everything is in place for you to compare budget and planned values (step 5) as you monitor and adjust your project plan to keep it in line with your budget. To make it even easier, you can create a custom view (Section 11.5.5) with the columns and grouping you want already in place. Then for step 5, all you have to do is display your custom view.

1. Step 1: Create and Designate Budget Resources

Creating budget resources is the first step in the budget resource process. Your budget resources should correspond with the budget line items you want to track in your project, for example line items that the accounting department uses. They can be as broad as Labor Budget, Materials Budget, and Travel Budget, or as detailed as Equipment Rental, Lodging, Airfare, Publications, and Meals. It's entirely up to you how much budget detail you want.

Budget resources apply only to a project as a whole. You can't assign them to tasks, as you do regular resources. Create your budget resources as follows:

  1. In the Resource Sheet, in a blank Resource Name cell, type the name of the budget resource.

    When you enter names that differentiate budget resources from regular resources, as shown in Figure 1, you can more easily pick the right fields for your budget comparisons. Such a naming convention also helps when working with regular resources, as shown in Figure 1.

    Figure 1. Name budget resources so it's easy to identify them as budget resources, for example, "Budget-Travel", all caps like TRAVEL BUDGET, or starting a budget resource name with the corresponding budget account number. One advantage to starting with a number is that budget resources appear together at the top of a resource list that's sorted alphabetically from A to Z, which is helpful because they're summary numbers.

  2. In the Type field, choose Work, Material, or Cost, depending on the type of cost.

    For example, a budget resource named "0822 TRAVEL BUDGET" would be a cost resource, while a budget resource named "1114 LABOR BUDGET" would likely be a work resource.

    For a material budget resource, in the Material Label field, type the unit of measurement, like cubic yards or boxes.

    Although you can lump different types of labor together under a single labor budget item (regular employees, temporary employees, and so on), create a separate budget resource for each resource category whose budget you want to track, such as employees, contractors, and vendors.


    Tip:

    If you want to express your labor budget in dollars rather than hours, identify the budget resources for it as a cost resource rather than a work resource. See the box on Comparing Budgeted Labor Costs for instructions.


  3. Double-click the name of the new budget resource to open the Resource Information dialog box.

    You can also open the dialog box by selecting the budget resource and then choosing Resource→Properties→Information.

  4. On the General tab, turn on the Budget checkbox, as demonstrated in Figure 2, and then click OK.

    Turning on the Budget checkbox means you can assign this resource only to the project summary task, making it, in effect, a kind of project summary resource.

    Figure 2. The Budget checkbox lives on the General tab. It's grayed out in the Multiple Resource Information dialog box (which opens when you select several resources and press Shift+F2), so you must set budget resources one at a time. Other fields that relate to work or material resources, like Email and "Material label" are grayed out.

  5. Repeat steps 1–4 to create additional budget resources.

    The box on Creating Several Budget Resources at Once describes a shortcut for creating several budget resources at once.

2. Step 2: Assign Budget Resources to the Project Summary Task

With your budget resources created, you're now ready to assign them to your project. A budget resource is meant to convey the overall amount allocated to a budget category for an entire project, which is why you assign them to the project summary task, not individual tasks. In fact, a budget resource can't be assigned to anything except the project summary task.

If you can't see the project summary task (the one at the top with row number 0), choose Format→Show/Hide and turn on the Project Summary Task checkbox. Now assign budget resources to your project summary task by following these steps:

  1. Select the project summary task, and then choose Resource→Assignments→Assign Resources.

    The Assign Resources dialog box appears.

    If your resource list is long, your job will be easier if you name budget resources so they appear in a group; for example, by starting all the budget resource names with a number, as shown in Figure 3.

    Workaround Workshop: Creating Several Budget Resources at Once

    Most project managers create their budget resources in one fell swoop. Even so, the Multiple Resource Information dialog box doesn't let you turn on the Budget checkbox for all selected resources. Evidently, Project expects you to waste time double-clicking budget resources one at a time, turning on the Budget checkbox, clicking OK, and then doing it again with the next budget resource. Since you have more important things to do, here's a shortcut for designating several budget resources at once: Add the Budget column to the Resource Sheet, and change the Budget value there. Here are the steps:

    1. In the Resource Sheet, right-click the column heading next to where you want to add the Budget column, and then choose Insert Column.

    2. In the "Field name" drop-down list, choose Budget. Project inserts the Budget column to the left of the selected column and usually shows the value No.

    3. Select the cell for the first budget resource and, in the drop-down list, choose Yes. If budget resources are grouped together, you can drag the black square at the cell's bottom-right corner to copy Yes to other Budget cells.

    4. When you're done, hide the column by right-clicking the Budget column heading and then choosing Hide Column.


    Figure 3. To display only budget resources in the Assign Resources dialog box, expand the "Resource list options" section by clicking the +. Turn on the "Filter by" checkbox, and then, in the drop-down list, choose Budget Resources.

  2. Select the first budget resource you want to assign, and then click Assign.

    As you can with regular resources, you can select several budget resources and click Assign to assign them all to a task at once.

    Budget resources are the only kind of resource you can assign to the project summary task. So if you select one resource and the Assign button is missing in action, then the resource you selected isn't a budget resource. Perhaps you named the resource as a budget resource but forgot to turn on its Budget checkbox in the Resource Information dialog box .

  3. Repeat the previous step for any additional budget resources you want to assign to the project summary task.

    When you're done, you can close the Assign Resource dialog box if you want to see more of the screen.

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