Costs and Man Hours

For action resources, you can now track the planned vs. actual usage for both costs and man hours.

The Planned Cost and Actual Cost fields can be enabled or disabled, depending on the configurable settings for the current project. If the properties are enabled, the planned costs will always be calculated automatically based on the action duration, person responsible and project planning resources. For the actual costs, you can choose to enter manually or use the automatic calculations.

Enter Manually

If you prefer to enter the actual costs/hours instead of using the automatically calculated values, select Yes in the Manually enter costs/man hours? field.

Let the software calculate

Enter the values yourself

Calculate Automatically

The automatic calculations are based on:

  • The Duration (the number of working days from the start date to the due/completion date).
  • The Person Responsible and/or the Team:
    • The % utilization is set in each action record.
    • The Hours per Day and Cost Category are set in each user account record.
  • The Facility (e.g., test lab or other facility needed to complete the action):
    • The % utilization is set in each action record.
    • The Max Hours per Day and Cost Category are set in each facility properties record.
  • The Materials (e.g., test samples or other material needed to complete the action):
  • Any Additional Costs that are defined directly in each action record.

The following simple examples demonstrate how each type of cost is calculated.

Personnel Costs

Action Duration:

5 working days

Joe Engineer:

Works 8 hours per day (5 days x 8 hours = 40 hours)

 

Time is billed at $100 per hour (no "per instance" cost)

 

Assigned as Person Responsible with 5% utilization (40 hours x .05 = 2 hours)

 

Also belongs to the assigned Team with 1% utilization (40 hours x .01 = .4 hours)

The calculated values for Joe’s work on this action are 2.4 man hours and 2.4 x $100 = $240.

Facilities Costs

Action Duration:

5 working days

ABC Test Lab:

Is available up to 8 hours per day (5 days x 8 hours = 40 hours)

 

The utilization for this action is 20% (40 hours x .20 = 8 hours)

 

Costs $500 "per instance" plus $50 per hour

The calculated cost for using this facility to complete the action is $500 + (8x$50) = $900.

Materials Costs

Gizmo Prototype:

Costs $5000 to produce the batch of test units (the "per instance" cost)

 

The test requires 10 samples

 

Each unit costs $500 (the "direct cost per hour or unit")

The calculated cost for the materials required to complete the action is $5000 + (10x$500) = $10,000.

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