Expense and Consultant Planning

If your company or enterprise enables planning for expenses and consultants, you can assign expense types and consultant types to work breakdown structure elements and enter planned amounts for those assignments.

On the Expenses and Consultants tabs in Plan mode in the Projects hub, you can:

• Review planned amounts for the full life of the project and at any work breakdown structure level. The Expenses and Consultants tabs display planned amounts for the life of the project for any work breakdown structure elements included in the plan.

  When you display a project in the grid, you can expand the work breakdown structure to display the lower-level work breakdown structure elements and, at the lowest level, the expense type or consultant type assignments themselves. For each expense type or consultant type, you can see the planned amounts for the work breakdown structure element. Those amounts roll up from the assignment level to each of the work breakdown structure levels.

• Assign expense types and consultant types to your projects. To assign expense types or consultant types, select a lowest-level work breakdown structure element in the planning grid and click + next to the name of the work breakdown structure element. In the Add Expense Types dialog box or Add Consultant Types dialog box, select one or more expense types or consultant types that you want to assign to that work breakdown structure element.

  The lowest work breakdown structure level for planning expenses or consultants is the level that you specify in the Planning Level field on the Expenses tab or Consultants tab of the Plan Settings dialog box.

• Enter planned amounts for individual assignments or enter summary hours for allocation to individual assignments. After you assign expense types or consultant types to one or more work breakdown structure elements for a project, you can use the grid on the Expenses tab or Consultants tab to enter planned amounts for those assignments:
  • Use the Planned Cost fields on expense type or consultant type grid rows to enter planned amounts for individual assignments.
  • An alternative is to enter the total planned amount in the Planned Cost field for a work breakdown structure element at any level of the tree structure. DPS then automatically allocates that amount to lower-level work breakdown structure elements and to individual expense types or consultant types under that work breakdown structure element.
• Copy plans from other projects. You can create a new project based on an existing project, either by selecting From Project in the Create Project field on the New Project form or by selecting Copy Project on the Actions menu. When you do this, you have the option to copy the existing project's plan as a starting point for the new project's plan.
• Adjust plans. If you enter assignments for expense types or consultant types and later need to make changes, you can do any of the following:
  • Add or delete assignments.
  • Change planned amounts.
  • Reschedule plans. Shift plan dates while preserving the same number of working days or change the duration of a plan date range. Rescheduling plan dates from one of the planning grids affects the plan dates for labor, expense, and consultant planning.
  • Reassign an assignment from one expense type or consultant type to another.
• Plan based on cost or billing rates. Depending on plan settings, plan amounts are based on cost rates or billing rates. If you plan your project based on both cost and billing rates, you can switch between cost amounts and billing amounts.