Plan Settings Dialog Box

Use the Plan Settings dialog box to specify the budget type, cost and billing rates, and other settings to use for the currently selected project plan.

When you create a project from an existing project and select to copy the existing project's plan, the plan settings for the existing project are also copied for the new plan. If you create a project in any other way, the new project is assigned default plan settings based on options selected on the Plan Settings form (Settings > Resource Planning > Plan Settings) and the Rates form (Settings > Resource Planning > Rates). In either case, if you have the required access rights, you can change those settings for the new plan.

When You Save the Plan Settings

When you click Save on the dialog box, Vantagepoint saves any changes that you made on any of the tabs and does the following:

• Automatically recalculates the planned cost and/or billing values for all employee and generic resource assignments based on the current rate settings, including the effective dates associated with rates
• Applies the billing multiplier to unit assignment rows based on the value entered in the Billing Multiplier field on the Units tab

In addition, Vantagepoint recalculates the planned amounts when you select the following checkboxes:

• On the Expenses tab, when you select the Recalculate Planned Billing checkbox and then click Save, Vantagepoint recalculates the planned bill amount for all reimbursable expense assignments based on the current rate settings.
• On the Consultants tab, when you select the Recalculate Planned Billing checkbox and then click Save, Vantagepoint recalculates the planned bill amount for all reimbursable consultant assignments based on the current rate settings.
• On the Units tab, when you select the Recalculate Planned Cost and/or Recalculate Planned Billing checkbox and then click Save, Vantagepoint recalculates the planned cost and/or bill amounts for all units based on the current rate settings.

Because all labor assignment amounts are recalculated using current rate settings each time you retrieve the plan and when you save settings, you should use rate tables and effective dates for new rates if you want older rates to continue to apply for certain calendar periods and new rates to apply for subsequent periods. For example, if you add a new rate with an effective date for an employee, only assigned hours for that employee that fall on or after that date are affected by the new rate.

You also plan units by calendar period; however, unlike labor rate tables, unit tables do not support effective dates. If you want to start the project using one rate for planning a unit and then change to a different rate at some point in the project, while preserving planned amounts at the old rate for earlier calendar periods and amounts at the new rate for later calendar periods, you can do either of the following:

• Create a second unit that is essentially a duplicate of the first but with a unique unit number and different rate information and then include both units in the same unit table. In the project plan, use the Reassign option to transfer a portion of the planned quantities from the first unit to the second unit with the new rate. Alternatively, you can add assignment rows for both units and then enter planned quantities for each for the appropriate calendar periods.
• Create a second unit table. In one table, include the unit with its initial rate information. In the second table, include the same unit with its later rate information. In the project plan, add assignment rows for the two unit-and-table combinations and then enter planned quantities for each for the appropriate calendar periods.

Plan Expenses and Consultants in Calendar Periods

If enabled for your project's company, you can also plan expense and consultant amounts in calendar periods. With the necessary role access rights, you can enable or disable planning in calendar periods for individual projects using the Plan in Calendar Periods checkbox on the Expenses and Consultants tabs of the Plan Settings dialog box.

When you enable this setting, use the Sub-Row Selection dialog box ( > Sub-Row Selection) to select at least one sub-row to view planned, actual, and baseline data for expenses and/or consultants in the calendar section of the Expenses and/or Consultants tabs. To enter or update planned amounts for expenses and/or consultants in the calendar periods, select to display the Planned Cost and/or Planned Billing sub-rows. The ability to edit these sub-rows depends on the specified budget type for the plan, applied markup settings, and if the currencies shown in the plan differ between cost and billing.

If you later clear this checkbox, Vantagepoint does not remove any existing plan or baseline data for expenses and/or consultants. It will restore the previous proportion of the total planned amount in calendar periods when you re-enable the setting.

Discard Unpublished Changes

If you change settings for a plan or recalculate planned amounts and then decide that you are not happy with the changes, you can click Other Actions > Revert on the Actions bar to return to the last published version of the plan and restore the prior plan values. The action is available if the plan contains changes that have not yet been published, whether or not those changes have been checked in.

Plans Converted from Vision or iAccess

If a Vision or iAccess plan was converted to Vantagepoint, many converted assignments may have override rate information that was saved for specific calendar periods while in Vision or iAccess. Following conversion, those plan amounts, by default, are not automatically recalculated when you retrieve a plan or save plan settings in Vantagepoint.

You can choose to automatically recalculate planned labor amounts in a converted plan by selecting the Recalculate Planned Cost checkbox and/or the Recalculate Planned Billing checkbox on the Labor tab of the Plan Settings dialog box. You need to do this only once; from that point forward, the planned labor assignments will be recalculated automatically based on the current settings each time you click Save. Whether or not you force a recalculation, any new labor assignments added to a converted plan in Vantagepoint and any plan data entered for new calendar periods for existing labor assignments will be automatically recalculated based on current settings each time you retrieve a plan or save plan settings. In addition, if you edit any of the converted calendar period values that have saved rates from Vision or iAccess, they will, from that point on, be subject to automatic recalculation as well.

If you want all planned expense, consultant, and unit amounts in a converted plan to be recalculated based on the current settings, select each of the Recalculate checkboxes on the Expenses, Consultants, and Units tabs and then save the plan settings.

If a plan is converted from Vision to Vantagepoint, the planned amounts for expenses and consultants are automatically displayed in the calendar periods based on your selected scale.