Asigning Task/Project Costs (Office 03/WIN 2K)

[mojave1]

How do you assign costs on a project basis. With a the project summary task highlighted, I am unable to enter any cost date into the fields of the Task Form. Office on-line help refers to "Fixed Cost Field", where does this exist??

[Andrew Lockton]

Are you able to enter fixed costs onto non-summary tasks? I would have expected that the Summary task will automatically work out the cost by totalling up the costs of the subtasks. Therefore I would have expected it to not be possible to allocate costs directly to a Summary Task.

Try allocating the fixed cost to a subtask of the summary item.

[rettingr]

The "Fixed Cost" field is available by selecting the Insert menu item and selecting column. You can pick any of the fields that are available to display. Once you have it, you should be able to enter fixed project costs in either a task or a summary task. Keep in mind that Project does not 'roll-up' fixed costs to the summary tasks like it does for the "cost" column. If you have the fixed cost and cost columns next to each other, you will see that the fixed cost gets added to the cost column and the cost column rolls up into the summary task. Does that make sense? Understanding how these fields calculate is sometimes difficult. Hope that helps.

[mojave1]

THANKS FOR THE GUIDANCE...IS THIS THE ONLY METHOD OF ASSIGNING FIXED COSTS/SUBCONTRACT COSTS? CAN THIS DATA ALSO BE ENTERED VIA THE "TASK FORM"??

[rettingr]

You could also make your fixed cost or subcontract a resource and enter it that way as just cost. You will need to create the resource, assign it a rate of $1 and plug in the number of dollars you will be assigning as a resource cost on the task form.

[mojave1]

thanks randy

[csimms]

Cost is a calculated field:
(Work*Standard Rate)+ (Overtime Hours * Overtime Rate) + Resource Per Use Cost + Task Fixed Cost.
Fixed Cost is merely as additional cost added to a task and is a separate field for data storage, so it makes sense that it does not roll up into the Summary tasks. If you enter a value into the Cost field manually the difference between the calculated cost and the manually typed in cost will be added into the Fixed cost field. If the entered value is > than the calculated value the fixed cost will reflect a positive number, if you enter a value in cost < the calculated value the Fixed cost will reflect a negative number. The Summary tasks will show the revised calculation in the cost field not in the Fixed cost field.
Hope this helps understanding what is being calculated.

Carla