Although the Project Status Report (PSR) and Job Summary Report (JSR) is a valuable tool for analyzing project resource expenditures, they have limited value to project managers. There is a need to know the exact cost impact when you add or remove a resource from the project, and the PSR and JSR do not provide this information because they separate all indirect cost from individual staff and vendor resources. They do not provide visibility to fully burdened individual resource costs.
Additionally, the JSR is a snapshot presentation of consumed project resources associated with a specific accounting period and/or sub-period. It does not provide visibility to the trends of various resources consumed by the project over time that would reveal whether a staff or vendor resource has been used more or less by a specific project task over time.
Making decisions regarding turning on or off a project resource, substituting staff for vendor resources, or vice versa can depend upon visibility to the fully burdened costs of resources over time.
Dynamic links provide access to additional project cost information using a hunt and drill approach. They allow Deltek Budgeting & Planning users to locate resource expenditures up and down the project structure with many report presentations. The active level cost reports deploy drill down capabilities to detailed expenditures by resource over the entire period of performance.
As a project manager, you have been established as an authority over what must be accomplished on behalf of the customer who will be participating in the effort, and what funds will be consumed during the process. This information, along with an understanding of the project task hierarchy, allows you to go right to the source of performance problems and provide the details necessary to prescribe any corrective actions.