Budgeting Plans

To budget a plan, you assign resources, expenses, consultants, and units to the lowest-level elements in the plan's WBS. You can also budget a plan without making any assignments. For example, you can run a what-if scenario and enter budgeting numbers without assigning resources, expenses, or consultants. If you do so, you must specify cost rates or billing rates for any elements included at the lowest level of your plan.

To save time, you can have Vision calculate and spread hours and costs across calendar periods and rows in the accordion calendar grids.

Before You Assign Resources, Expenses, or Consultants

Before you make any budgeting assignments, Deltek recommends that you:

• Check that the Cost Rate and/or Bill Rate options are set on the Rates tab.

• Check resource availability. You can view resource utilization to see the employee's activities or project calendar (or both). You can use the employee schedule to enter time scale information to check an employee's schedule.

• The procedures to budget a plan assume that you have already constructed the plan's work breakdown structure and established all the work elements for the plan. If you've not yet done so, create a WBS before you assign resources, expenses, or consultants.

• If you plan to budget expenses in your plan, check that the Available in project planning option is selected for Expense Accounts and Expense Categories in Billing Rates Tables, in Billing.

Cost Rates and Billing Rates for Generic Resources

If you assign a generic resource, you can specify separate rate tables for billing rates and cost rates.

When You Finish Budgeting

When you finish creating the plan's WBS and budgeting its labor, expenses, and consultants, you can establish a baseline version. After you win the contract, you can change any generic resources to named resources.