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Alternate Project Structure

The Alternate Project Structure was designed to allow for more flexible project setup options and to provide an enhanced reporting capability.

If you want to present multiple views of project data, you can use the Alternate Project Structure to restructure projects into logical groupings by product, by process, by location, by type (government or commercial), and so forth, without changing their basic organization structure.

In other cases, you can use the Alternate Project Structure as part of a more logical project setup, particularly for basic ordering agreements and other intricate contracting arrangements. Using the Alternate Project capability may involve grouping multiple projects to provide a view of a customer total or a product line.

The Alternate Project Structure is a summarizing tool, because you can combine costs that are collected at the lowest level of a regular project in multiple ways. You can provide a summarized billing for two or more projects that belong to a single customer, or you can provide multiple P&L views of project data. You can revise and reconfigure each alternate project as often as necessary, and you can delete it (or simply not use it) when it is no longer needed. Following are some sample uses for the Alternate Project Structure.

Multi-Dimensional View of Projects Example

A company provides both services and products to their customers. Each project is tracked separately for cost collection, revenue recognition, and billing purposes. However, the company would like to see revenue and profit for services contracts and non-services contracts.

Although it is true that the organization scheme could include a level for Products vs. Services, that is not a natural part of the operating organization (the company is organized by location, not products or services). The company decides to use the Alternate Reporting Structure to provide the additional view of project data by product/service.

Currently, their projects are structured as follows:

  • 1001 — Services
  • 1002 — Services
  • 1003 — Products
  • 1004 — Services
  • 1005 — Products
  • 1006 — Products
  • 1007 — Products
  • 1008 — Services

    The Alternate Project Structure is project 9000 and its name is "Product/Service View." It has three levels: a summary level at 9000, a summary level at 9000.1 for services, a summary level at 9000.2 for Products, and a detail level that contains each project.

    9000: Product Service View
    9000.1 9000.2
    Services Products
    9000.1.01  —   Proj 1001 9000.1.01  —   Proj 1003
    9000.1.02  —   Proj 1002 9000.2.02  —   Proj 1005
    9000.1.03  —   Proj 1004 9000.2.03  —   Proj 1006
    9000.1.04  —   Proj 1008 9000.2.04  —   Proj 1007

    This setup allows for the rollup of all revenues and costs for services projects into the 9000.1 summary and the rollup of revenues and costs for products projects into the 9000.2 summary.

Alternate Project Setup Option Example

You can also use the Alternate Project Structure as an additional setup option for Basic Ordering Agreements (BOAs). A company has a BOA with the General Services Administration (GSA) to provide computer maintenance services/supplies for GSA locations across the country. As a part of the agreement, the company provides reporting/tracking of costs/funding at the BOA level and at the location level; however, billings are prepared by location.

You could set up the BOA as the top level of a project (for example, project number "2000"). Each location is a separate level-two summary, and below that are tasks and subtasks for each location. However, the company decides that this project setup option results in a huge project (thousands of tasks at the lowest level) and causes logistical problems because each location manager has to receive and manage only his piece of the project.

2000: BOA
2000.1 2000.2 2000.3 2000.4
Denver Boston Miami San Diego
2000.1.01      2000.1.02

Task 1           Task 2

2000.1.01.01
2000.1.01.99
Subtasks 1-99

The company rejects the first setup option and elects to use the Alternate Reporting Structure to handle the BOA. First, they set up separate projects for each location. Then they create the Alternate Reporting Structure to roll up all of the locations into the BOA level.

The project structure is as follows:

  • 2001 — Denver
  • 2002 — Boston
  • 2003 — Miami
  • 2004 — San Diego

    The Alternate Project Structure becomes project 2000 and its name is "GSA BOA." It has two levels: a summary level at 2000 and a detail level that contains each project (location).

    2000: GSA BOA
    2000.1 2000.2 2000.3 2000.4
    Proj 2001 Proj 2002 Proj 2003 Proj 2004

    This setup makes the BOA more manageable (each location manager gets his own project to manage) and still provides reporting at the BOA level.

Setup Considerations for the Alternate Project Structure

When you set up the Alternate Project Structure, first you must specify the alternate project's number and name. The top-level project number for the alternate project must be the same length as the top-level number for all of your regular projects, as specified on the Configure Project Settings screen.

After specifying the alternate project's number and name, you must specify the number of levels and their length. You must create summary levels only above the level where you are attaching projects and/or tasks. In other words, if you set up an alternate project like the one in the BOA example that summarizes one level above the level of your regular projects, but are including in that alternate project a project that already has four levels of its own, specify only two levels for the alternate project, rather than five. Costs from the regular project are rolled up to level 2 of the alternate project, and then rolled up again to the top-level.

If you are including all of the tasks on a regular project in an alternate project, you can either link each task separately to the alternate project and do not select the check box in the Low Lev field on the Selected Projects subtask of the Manage Alternate Projects screen, or link the top level of the regular project to the alternate project and select the check box in the Low Lev field. In either case, costs and revenue from the task level on the regular project are rolled up and included in the alternate project.

In addition, you do not have to include all of the tasks on a regular project in an alternate project; you can include only a portion of the regular project. However, there are no edits provided to ensure that you have included a task only one time or that you have included all the tasks you wanted to include.