Resources are divided into two main categories:
Direct costs that are applied to only one specific WBS element
Indirect costs that can be applied to more than one resource on a pro rata basis
In MPM, you use the Burdens application to specify the indirect costs, or burdens. You can specify four types of burden costs:
Overhead (OH)
General & Administrative (G&A)
Cost of Money (COM)
Fee (profit)
You use the burdens to build burden templates, then assign the burden templates to resources. When a resource is used, the burden template assigned to the resource determines how the burdens are applied. For example, an engineer will have a basic hourly rate based on the engineer's annual salary. But the engineer will also have a burden rate based on Overhead, General & Administrative, and Cost of Money.
The burden rates can be adjusted for each month of a project. The burden rates are stored in tables. You can define as many different rate tables for a project as required.
Burdens are one of the four components that define the pricing structure (estimating/ budgeting/burdening) of your company. The four components are:
Elements of cost (EOC) including classes of cost (COC)
Burdens and fee codes, descriptions, and rates
Resource codes, descriptions, and rates