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Work Breakdown Structure Components

TheVantagepoint work breakdown structure includes four main components: organizations, work breakdown structure levels, labor codes, and accounts.

Naming Conventions

The information on this page uses the Vantagepoint default names for work breakdown structure and other elements, including "project," "phase," "task," "organization," "labor code," and "account."

However, you can change these names to meet your business requirements. For example, you might make changes such as these:
Level Default Label Alternate Ex. 1 Alternate Ex. 2
One Project Client Matter
Two Phase Engagement Task
Three Task Event Deliverable

Once you make naming changes, these changes flow through the Vantagepoint user interface and the online help.

Organizations

Organizations are companies, divisions, departments, or business units, in one or more locations, practicing one or more disciplines, that incur expenses or generate revenue for a larger enterprise. You can have up to a five-level organization code structure. The total length is up to 14 characters, including any delimiters.

Work Breakdown Structure Levels: Projects, Phases, and Tasks

You can configure a project with up to three levels of detail, each with its own numbering structure and attributes. You can use delimiters to further divide each of these levels.

Each level can have its own attributes, including:
  • Contract value
  • Organization
  • Project manager and principal
  • Revenue method
  • Start and end dates
  • User-defined field values

Work breakdown structure level values are hierarchical, meaning the level two number is one delimiter greater than the level one number, and the level three number is one delimiter greater than the level two number. You must have a level one number to have a level two number, and a level two number to have a level three number.

For example:

Level Number
Project Number 9300.
Phase Number 9300.01
Task Number 9300.01.01

Each level has a minimum and maximum number of characters:

Level Default Label Maximum Length Minimum Length
One Project 30 characters, including two delimiters 3 characters
Two Phase 7 characters, including one delimiter 1 character
Three Task 7 characters, including one delimiter 1 character

For any given work effort, you do not have to create a balanced work breakdown structure tree of projects, phases, and tasks.

Projects

Projects are your individual jobs.

When you use the Vantagepoint Accounting, Billing, or Time and Expense applications, all of the work that your enterprise does and all of the money that it spends and receives is associated with specific projects.

A project can be any of the following:
  • A regular, revenue-producing job.
  • A way to collect overhead information. For example, when your payables clerk spends the day making payments to vendors, the clerk charges that labor to an overhead project. Other overhead collection projects may include a Vacation project, a Sick project, or a General Overhead project.
  • A way to collect and track information and resources associated with a marketing campaign.
  • If you use Organization Reporting, a project can be a way to guide non-project-related transactions to the appropriate organization’s balance sheet accounts.

Phases and Tasks

You can further divide, organize, and track a project's work using delimiters and/or using phases and tasks. Use phases and tasks to break out the individual segments of a project and track financial results and profitability by each individual segment. Phases and tasks are used typically for internal purposes. You cannot bill phases and tasks individually.

Delimiters

A delimiter is a divider, such as a period or semi-colon, that separates one segment of a number from another. You can use delimiters in your project numbers, phase numbers, and/or task numbers.

  • Project delimiters: These delimiters are used to create up to two additional levels of structure for your project, which you can bill individually. The sub-projects that you create with delimiters are similar to phases and tasks, except that you can bill delimiter sub-projects individually.
  • Phase or task delimiters: These delimiters are used to create a structure below the phase and task level to capture more detail. You cannot bill phases or tasks individually.
Valid delimiters are:
  • . (period)
  • : (colon)
  • - (dash)

If you use project, phase, and/or task delimiters as well as phases and tasks, you can have up to six delimiters and seven segments in your work breakdown structure number. For example:

Labor Codes

Labor codes classify the work that your employees do. They classify work on a project, phase, or task in categories, or levels, that you define, such as department, progress, service, or staff level.

You can use a labor code to identify any of the following items:
  • The department associated with a labor charge.
  • The project phase or segment associated with a labor charge, if you only want to budget labor for a particular aspect of a project and don't need to set up a work breakdown structure phase.
  • The service provided by the employee.
  • The staff level of the employee.

Unlike a set of phases or phases and tasks, which you define on a project-by-project basis, your labor codes are established on an enterprise-wide basis. The same set of labor codes applies to all of your projects.

You do not have to use labor codes. Without labor codes, your work breakdown structure may still contain enough information to meet your administrative needs for tracking work on a project. If you decide to use labor codes, they are required with all timesheet transactions, to identify each hour of labor.

Labor codes can have up to five levels, with 14 characters total.

No standard labor codes come with Vantagepoint.

Accounts

Your general ledger accounts track the expenses incurred by projects. Whenever you post data, the accounts in the general ledger are affected by the posting.

The length of your account numbers can be up to 11 characters, including one delimiter. The minimum length is three characters. The default is six characters with a period (.) as a delimiter in the fourth position (for example, 123.45)

Vantagepoint comes with a standard chart of accounts designed to meet the accounting needs of most enterprises. You can use this chart of accounts as is or modify it to meet your needs.