Comparing Uses for WBS Components

Before you decide whether or not your firm should use phases, phases and tasks, delimiters, labor codes, or some combination of the three, you must understand the differences between these components.

The more components that you use to create your WBS, the more complex your WBS structure will be.

WBS Component	Used for Billing	Used for Cost, Expense Reporting	Used for Labor Budgeting	Set firmwide
Project Numbers	Yes	Yes	Yes	No — Set at the project level
Project delimiters	Yes Project delimiters let you break project work into sub-projects, similar to phases or tasks. The key difference is that you can bill work on an individual sub-project, but you cannot bill work on an individual phase or task.	Yes	Yes	No
Phases and tasks	No You cannot bill phases or tasks individually, but you can show them separately on the project invoice.	Yes	Yes	No — Set at the project level
Phase or task delimiters	No You cannot bill sub-phases or sub-tasks, but you can show them separately on the project invoice.	Yes	Yes	No
Labor codes	Yes Labor codes are typically used only for internal budgeting or planning purposes. However, some firms choose to base labor billing amounts on labor codes. If you bill labor based on activity rather than based on employee or employee level, you may want to use labor codes.	No	Yes Labor codes are often used for budgeting. You cannot track expenses or costs, or attribute work to a particular project manager using labor codes.	Yes Labor codes are set on a firm-wide basis. You select from the same set of labor codes for each project.