Delimiters in the Work Breakdown Structure
When you plan your work breakdown structure, you can specify that WBS level numbers include delimiters. A delimiter is any special character (usually a period) used as a separator.
During Vision setup, you can configure Vision to use delimiters in most numbers, including account numbers, employee numbers, client numbers, vendor numbers, project numbers, phase numbers, task numbers, unit numbers, and unit table numbers.
Project numbers can have a maximum of two delimiters. Phase and task numbers can have one delimiter.
Firms often use a delimiter to separate a project number into a base number and a sub-number. They use the sub-number for additional work orders, representing costs beyond the scope of basic services.
A firm may, for example, have a base project 97014.00, with sub-projects 97014.01 and 97014.02. When you use sub-numbers, you have the option of printing a separate invoice for each sub-project.
- . (period)
- : (colon)
- - (dash)
Reasons to Use Delimiters
| Business Goal | How to Use Delimiters |
|---|---|
| Distinguish one piece of work from another, maintain the relationship, and bill each piece separately | Firms often use a delimiter to separate a project number into a main number and a subnumber. The subnumber is useful to:
A firm may, for example, have a project 97014.00, with sub-projects 97014.01 and 97014.02. When you use delimiters, you have the option of printing a separate invoice for each sub-project, and running reports separately for each sub-project, or rolled up into one report based on the base number. For example, you can run a Project Summary report that includes all projects with the beginning digits 97014. If you do not need to bill the work done on each individual sub-project, you can also use phases and tasks to divide the work. You cannot bill an individual phase or task. |
| Track work on one phase of a project completed by different organizations, and bill each organization separately | Different roles within your firm often require different project data. For example, a project manager wants to divide her John Hancock project into three phases: parking garage, shopping level, and observation deck. This is adequate for the project manager, but the accountant knows that both the Mississippi and Massachusetts offices are going to work on the shopping level, and she wants to apply costs and expenses to the appropriate organization.
To solve both needs, you can structure your phase number with a dash as a delimiter. A number, for example, 101, represents the phase "shopping level." 101-A represents the Mississippi office, and 101-B represents the Massachusetts office. By using a delimiter in the phase number, the project manager can manage the phase, "shopping level," as one component, and the accountant can treat it as two components. You usually create projects for external reporting purposes (for example, to generate bills). If you have no internal need to divide a project into parts, but do have an external need, you should consider using a project sub-number to divide the project. For example, if you want to divide project 99056.00 into parts on your invoices, you can create the sub-projects 99056.01 and 99056.02 instead of using phases or phases and tasks. |
| Break a project into more than three levels of detail | For very large projects, a project manager may need all the detail that Vision allows to control costs. Using delimiters offers two more levels of breakdown. |
| Quickly and easily group similar projects by project number on reports | If you create a project with several sub-projects using delimiters, you can specify the base project number and run a report that will include all the sub-projects.
For example, if you have a project 90012, and two sub-projects 90012.001, and 90012.002, you can run a report that includes all projects with the base number 90012. |