Reporting Calendars
Reporting calendars allow you to view time-scaled data in a barchart or histogram view using a non-linear date scale.
Using reporting calendars you can, for example, display a histogram that shows resource usage on a monthly basis for the next three months, on a quarterly basis for the four quarters following that, and on a yearly basis for the remaining years of the project.
Reporting calendars are a useful reporting tool since planners and project managers tend to be more interested in detailed information for events happening relatively soon. For events happening in the more distant future, on the other hand, information summarized to a higher level is often perfectly adequate and may be more understandable.
For example, you could use a date scale based on reporting calendars to view a histogram or barchart report that shows data in weeks for the current month, in months for the remainder of the quarter, and then in quarters for the rest of the year. You might then only want to look at reports that show data in years for the remainder of the project.
You can define multiple reporting calendars that can be used with any project. This makes it easy to create views and reports that show the same data summarized against different sets of reporting periods. Using this feature you can, for example, set up one view that shows the project cost estimates against your standard fiscal reporting periods and another view that shows the same data using the client’s reporting periods.
This feature is also frequently used to create fiscal calendars. Many companies define their fiscal calendars in such a way that the month ends on a Friday. Using the Reporting Calendar feature, you can define calendars that end on a specific date. You can then create a histogram that displays the budget per fiscal period.
Once created, you can use the Date Scale Preferences dialog box Reporting Calendar tab to select a different reporting calendar to use on the date scale of each barchart or histogram. This feature allows you to create reports that provide different views of the same data. For example, you might want to create a barchart based on your fiscal year and another barchart based on the client's fiscal year.
To see the list of available reporting calendars, click Reporting Calendars on the Tools tab to display the Reporting Calendars dialog box. To define a reporting calendar, you can enter a set of cut-off dates and labels using the Edit Reporting Calendar dialog box.
For data prior to the first date, Open Plan uses the first reporting periods to extrapolate the period interval in order to report the data. For data after the last date, Open Plan extrapolates the period interval using the last two reporting periods. For example, assume you have defined the reporting calendar to report data in weeks for 4 weeks and then in months for 11 months. For data prior to the first date in the reporting calendar, Open Plan will use the first two reporting periods to determine the period interval is weeks and report the data accordingly. Data following the last date in the reporting calendar is displayed in months.
Default Reporting Calendar
You can specify a default reporting calendar on the Cost tab of the Project Properties dialog box. The Reporting Calendar field is used as a default reporting calendar for the date scale if the reporting calendar option is chosen. When creating or updating a baseline, Open Plan uses the data in this file to break any usage records that span more than one calendar period into additional records.