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Linking duration and cost/budget

11 replies [Last post]
Dennis Hanks
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What are the settings to permit a linkage of activity duration and the activity cost/budget? I'd like to have P6 calculate the change in costs as I change the duration. I thought this was possible, but I'm not able to do it. Any thoughts? Thanks.

Replies

Dennis Hanks
User offline. Last seen 9 years 8 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 310

You're right. You can't do using 'Activities' alone.

Zoltan Palffy
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not true I import the budget costs and budget untis all of the time 

you have to make sure that claculate cost from units is not checked if it is you have to run a global change to set it to no prior to importing it.

also if you export the info to import it make sure that the resource already exists and that you select resource and resource assignments during the export to use it as a template for imporitng back in to p6 after you make the changes in excel

Dennis Hanks
User offline. Last seen 9 years 8 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 310

Zoltan;

The key was item 4. Seems as though no budget element is importable.Thanks, I learned something.

Dennis Hanks
User offline. Last seen 9 years 8 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 310

In this particular case, I wanted to take the values from a UDF (Estimated Labor Units) and copy/paste them to Buggeted Labor Units via Excel export/import. No change after Import. I'll check on the * on the column. Pretty sure I was able to do this before. Will also check for calculate costs option.

Note: Changing Duration Type to Fixed Units and Fixed Units/Time made no difference.

Zoltan Palffy
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import export problems stem from one of these 4 things or a combination of them.

1. the user not having the correct access right to import and or export.

2. if you can not import cost you have to make sure that calculate costs from units is set to NO. If not you can run a global change the setting to NO.

3. Users have the incorrect format for importing. It's always best take one activity with all of the with the information manually input into p6  then export that activity and use it as a template for importing the information back into p6.

4. Users try to import fields that are not importable any field that you have exported that has an asterisks * on it at the top of the column heading is NOT importable. 

Dennis Hanks
User offline. Last seen 9 years 8 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 310

Thanks, I thought I tried that. Will try again. There is a slight possibility that the problem may be that the xer file was created from an EPPM project and I'm reading it on a P6 Pro. Having difficulty with Excel import/export functions in the same project. Primavera support is looking into it. That's the current theory.

Zoltan Palffy
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I belie that if you change your duration type to fixed durations and units/time this will give you what you want 

Dennis Hanks
User offline. Last seen 9 years 8 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 310

Zoltan;

I'm only able to modify duration and cost through globals. If I change duration, my Budgeted Labor Cost does not change. I thought it would. I must be doing something wrong. Globals will do it, but I wanted something 'real time'. Thanks for helping. I use Fixed Units/Time.

Zoltan Palffy
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yes you can do that as you have it set up if you set the default units/day to 8 and set the unit rate to $10/hour

it will take the duration multiply it times 8 to give you your hours than multiply the hours by $10 to give your your costs.

so 1 day duration is 1*8 or 8 hours then 8 hours * $10/hours = $80

so 2 days duration is 2*8 or 16 hours then 16 hours * $10/hours = $160

now if you increase the durations the budgeted hours will increase and the budgeted costs will increase

you can also set time frames for when the units $ rate to increase or decrease.

you can always over ride the automatic calculation of hours and put in your own hours

so using this same example as above

so 1 day duration is 1*8 or 8 hours by I want two people do this activity so I change the budgeted hours to 16 then it would be 16 hours * $10/hours = $160

and 

2 days duration is 1*8 or 16 hours by I want two people do this activity so I change the budgeted hours to 32 then it would be 32 hours * $10/hours = $320

is this what you wanted to do  ?
Dennis Hanks
User offline. Last seen 9 years 8 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 310

Zoltan thanks. What I wanted to do was set staffing (units/hr), have a unit rate ($/hr), and then adjust the duration with P6 calculating the change in cost. Duration is fixed units. Apparently not possible with P6. Know of another program that can do that?

Zoltan Palffy
User offline. Last seen 2 days 18 hours ago. Offline
Joined: 13 Jul 2009
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you can change the duration type to fixed duration & units if you want you want the units/time to change which will change your remaing units. The only way to get cost to change is to have the resource set to calculate cost from units. So as the duraiton chnages the units chnage and the cost change.

 

calculate cost from units is set in the resource directory per individual resource.

you can also check this box calculate cost from units at the activity level under the resource tab by right clicking and select customize resource column and expand the general category and select calculate cost from units.