Budget Planning

To enter budget information in Cobra, you assign a resource to a work package, enter the budget amount in terms of either the first result or a derived result calculated from the first result, and spread the cost over the estimated duration of the work.

Cobra allows you to assign multiple resources to a single work package so that, for example, you can enter both labor and material budgets.

Cobra also allows you to budget at the control account level. The process of budgeting at the control account level is identical to budgeting at the work package level except that you must create a custom budget cost class. You cannot earn value at the control account budget level.

Pending Dates

Cobra allows you to specify a set of start and finish dates for new and existing budget type classes that are not included in the budget. These alternative budget dates are called pending dates. The pending date set allows you to enter budget data against different dates for budget that has not been included in the official reporting budget. This is important in the change management process where baseline dates cannot be updated until the budget is approved. Once a “pending” class is approved and added to an included budget class using Reclass, the baseline dates will be updated to encompass all related dates and resources.

You must take note of the following when using pending dates:

• If you change the Budget Date set on an existing class from budget to pending or vice versa, Cobra will ask you to respread the classes to use the new dates.
• Use the General tab of the Project Properties dialog box's Classes tab to specify the budget date set. The Budget Dates default to baseline dates, unless you specify pending dates on the Class Settings page of the New Class wizard.
• When you run the Reclass process from a class that uses pending dates to a class with the Include in Budget option selected, Cobra will update the baseline dates to encompass the pending dates. Cobra will also update the time-phased spread for existing records to include zero time-phased entries for new dates.
• During schedule integration, you can specify pending dates on the Date Selection page of the Integration wizard. The class dates determine the dates the time-phased records will be spread over.