Job Budget Merging Single Dialogs Workspace

Use this workspace to merge job budgets.

This is useful for integration with People Planner, but you can also use this functionality for other purposes.

The Job Budget Merging tab contains information about the job and the customer and includes fields for selecting the two budgets to merge, an island that displays the total number of conflicts between the two budgets, and a count of how many of these conflicts are yet to be resolved.

The Job Budget Line Merging sub-tab contains lines that give you a preview of what a merge of the two selected budgets might be like.

When you use People Planner and Maconomy, you can create job budgets in Maconomy and then export them to People Planner for resource planning. Afterwards, you can import the job budget from People Planner back into Maconomy. This results in two budgets for a job: the version that you created in Maconomy, and the version that you imported back from People Planner. The two budgets have different budget types. For example, the project that you created in Maconomy might have the budget type Original, while the budget that you imported from People Planner might have the budget type of People Planner. You set up the budget types when you configure the integration.

When you select the budget types, the result of a previous merge or a previous conflict resolution is shown in the Job Budget Line Merging sub-tab. Use the Load Job Budgets for Merging action to update the sub-tab. This is useful when you are working on resolving conflicts and need to interrupt your work for a while.

Matching Lines

The two budgets that you are merging, the Budget to Update and the Budget to Merge with, both have job budget lines. Some of these lines originate from the budget that you exported (the Maconomy version). After the export, lines might have been added in both Maconomy and in the exported budget (for example, in People Planner).

Lines that exist in only one of the budgets are added to the preview of the merged version (this means that the line was either added in Maconomy after exporting or added in the external application). These lines are marked as conflicts of the type Line Added.

Many lines exist in both budgets. For example, all of the lines that were created in Maconomy and that were exported to People Planner are present in the version that is imported back into Maconomy. This is always the case; job budget lines that are present in the Budget to Update must be present in the Budget to Merge with. You cannot change the structure of the budget in the external application. This means that you cannot remove lines, though you can move them around in the structure.

Lines are matched on the basis of a key that is stored in both Maconomy and in People Planner. This field is not visible in the standard layout, and you should never change it.

When two matching lines are found, they are compared. If one or more values in the fields of the line are different, the line is marked as having a conflict. The columns to the right in the Job Budget Line Merging sub-tab display the values from both budgets so that you can decide how to resolve the conflict. The columns on the left show what the merged budget will look like if it you approve it. You can also see the work breakdown structure of the budget.

The Job Budget Line Merging sub-tab contains information about conflicts, and it provides the means to resolve these conflicts.

For lines that have a conflict, the Conflict field contains a short description of the conflict. Columns to the right of this field show the conflicting values of the fields from each budget.

In the left part of the sub-tab, the fields contain the result of merging the budgets with the current selection of how to resolve any conflicts. You can think of this as a preview of the merge. The merge itself only happens when you use the Approve Merge action; only then is data actually changed.

Each line also contains the fields Keep <Budget to Update> and Keep <Budget to Merge with>. Selecting one of these mutually exclusive fields selects the values from that budget as the value to be used in the merged budget.

In certain situations, selecting one of these fields either causes the selection of additional fields or notifies you about fields that you might want to select:

• If lines in the work breakdown structure (WBS) might be left dangling, the lines higher in the structure are automatically selected to avoid this.
• If lines farther down in the WBS are affected by a selection that you make, a notification prompts you to examine those lines.

The following actions are useful for resolving conflicts: Mark All from Budget to Update, Mark All from Budget to Merge with, and Auto-Resolve Conflicts. You must resolve each line that has a conflict by selecting the budget from which the values should be taken. This can, for large budgets, be a tedious process. These actions can help you to select the conflict lines more quickly.

You must resolve all of the conflicts before you can approve the merge. You can, however, save the job without resolving conflicts (if, for example, you want to continue resolving at a later time).

After you resolve all of the conflicts, you can perform the actual merge by using the Approve Merge action.

Note that new conflicts can appear after the merge if the Budget to Update changes after you first loaded it.