budget cost reporting

[dan.lorenc]

why does the visual budget cost report inflate costs?

I want to assign a cost to a construction task that has an 86 day duration from 9/30/11 - 1/27/12.

The cost should start accruing (prorated) 2 months after the start of the construction task...so I created a seperate construction expense task and connected it by the predecessor to the construction task (assume the expense task is 27, so predecessor is 27SS+2 mons.

I then assigned a fixed cost to the expense task of $3M.

to see the prorated costs I used the visual report/budget cost report.

what I got was inflated costs....looking at the assignment usage worksheet in the excel workbook I found:

costs start 4Q11, week 21 = 34,883
22-25 = 174,418, but week 26 (end of quarter) jump up to spend the rest???
26 = 2,267,441... Q4 totals 2,99,999.98...!!!???

1Q12 continues!

Week 27-38 = 174,418, which give Q1 a total of 2,09,023!!!???

I notice that the 'offending' week 26, $2,267,441 happens to be the prorated amount of 174,418 + the 1Q12 total of 2,093,023...??.. coincidence?....

HELP!

[dan.lorenc]

update...

This happens when I run the report using weeks..quarters and months work find...??.. now I am confusssled....

visualreports/budgetcostreport opens a visual reports - create report window... under the select a template area is a 'Select level of usage data to include in the report'; options are years/quarters/months/weeks/days...

selecting weeks gives me the inflated numbers...quarter and years seem to work ok...

note to self...use months and dont worry about it!

[JAMES_911]

The Cost reports in Project are a powerful and very effective means of tracking the fiscal health of a project. By using these reports, you can quickly and accurately focus on the pressing cost issues and catch potential problems early. For more information you can visit this website and sort out your issues.