Mr. Simon Willson

Good Evening!

I cannot see the pictures, can you please share on email?

My Program contains only Material Cost.

I have updated the progress manually, and the program dates have been changed to new dates.

But the dates for Budgeted Units did not change.

Can anyone please help, I have to submitt my project Tomorrow.

Hi Simon Willson,

Very good post. What happens if the activities  have already those resources assigned? Ticking the option 'calculate cost from units' at the resource level does not update the same field for all activities where that resource is already assigned.

The clumsy solution is to go at each activity and tick the field which might take some time if you have thousands of activities or do a global change and modify that field from 'no' to 'yes'.

hi Marwin 

Since when you imoprt again to another computer the Unit /Price will be 0 and all manuall cost u add it it will become zero ,

but you can apply global change ,by taking all the cost to custmized coloum by using global change ,and after import you need to apply global change again to get the value in your cost .

I'm having the same problem but in the opposite manner. Among the resources I have assigned, some has the option "Auto compute actuals" checked and the others does not. However, when I update the schedule, I am getting actual costs for both checked & unchecked resources as I expect to see "0" for unchecked resources.

Thanks in advance.

Haitham,

Are you assigning a budget manually?

or you're using resources?

If you're using resources.

Go to ----> Enterprise Menu----> Resources

Find your resource in the upper part of the window. Once you find it , click on its name. 

In the lower part of the window click the "Details" tab. Turn on both "Auto Compute Actuals" and Calculate "Costs from Units" for this resource.

I think you need to have a Price/Unit under the "Unit & Prices" tab as well.

Once done assign your resource to your activity...etc.

Hi Simon,

Can you please re-upload the pictures as i am not able to see them. Actually i am facing the same problem. I have budgeted cost without unit rates thats why i am only using the auto compute actuals option but after updating schedule the actual cost is not updated accordingly.. Am i missing something??!! Please this is very urgent

Hi Dev,

I think your problem is down to the way your resource dictionary is configured (depending upon your set up, may need system administrator to sort out - you will at least need admin rights to configure). 

If your resource doesn't have the 'auto compute actuals' box checked in the dictionary, it will not be possible to calculate actual costs from the number of units progressed.

I have enclosed a couple of screen shots which hopefully explains what is happening. 

picture1.png

Each resource has 2 calculation settings embedded with the resource.  Auto Compute Actuals and Calculate Costs from Units.  Auto Compute Actuals does exactly what it says; P6 will calculate the actual price based upon the number of units used.  The second tick box is Calculate Costs from Units.  This will calculate the Budgeted Total Cost for the resource assignment based upon the resource unit price and the number of units assigned (note, if this is selected with a zero unit price, each time you reschedule, the BTC for the resource will default to zero even if you have manually input a price).

picture2.png

The second screen above now shows 2 activities.  Both are for the same duration but one has the resource assigned with both ‘Calculate Costs from Units’ and ‘Auto Compute Actuals’ selected.  

For the purpose of this demonstration I have created 2 resources, one with a unit cost and the other without.  

The project has been scheduled to the latest data date. 

picture3.png

The screen shot above shows the starting point with the new resources assigned. 

Now, for arguments sake, I have manually assigned a budget to the resource with the zero unit cost.

The next screen shot shows what happens when progress is assigned.  For this example, I have used the update progress tool.

Note activity A1000 has calculated the actual cost based upon the number of units burned in the progress update.  The other activity A1010 has not assigned any actual cost. 

picture4.png

picture5.png

I will also have to manually assign the actual cost as well (see below). 

picture6.png

For the final part of the demonstration, I am going to check the ‘Calculate Costs from Units’ box for activity A1010.  Remember, this activity has a zero unit cost. 

The following warning will appear.

picture7.png

picture8.png

Note now the budget which I manually assigned to be $10k has reset to zero as the resource unit price is $0 (80 hours x $0 = $0).

I hope this clears things up?

Cheers

Simon