When you approve a change request, and the change class is a budget class, PM Compass performs several checks. The way the checks are handled depends on whether you manually approve a change request or schedule an approval.
Manual Approval — You can manually process all actions except the Complete step which is automatically scheduled even when you select it from the change request Form View. If you approve a change request from the Form View and a check fails, an error message displays. You have the option to ignore the error and continue, or stop the process. See Manually Process a Workflow Action for more information.
Schedule an Approval — If you schedule the approval of a single change request or multiple change requests from the List View, these checks are not performed. If you want the system to perform these checks, you must approve each change request from the Form View.
Negative undistributed budget warning— This check fails if the change amount in the change request will yield a negative Undistributed Budget (UB) for the project. This check is performed when the Allocate Management Reserve option on the Advanced tab is not selected, indicating that the change is coming from Undistributed Budget (UB).
You will also get this error if you have not turned on the log and set the baseline.
If you choose to continue, Deltek recommends that you use Cobra's Project Audit Wizard to add a negotiated change amount to prevent UB from being negative.
If you choose not to continue, the change request does not advance, providing you the opportunity to change the requested amount in the change request or to turn on the log and set the baseline.
Negative management reserve — This check fails when the change amount in the change request will yield a negative Management Reserve (MR) for the project. This check is performed when the Allocate Management Reserve option on the Advanced tab is selected.
The Allocate Management Reserve field is only used as a flag or indicator and does not allocate the management reserve.
If you choose to continue, Deltek recommends that you use Cobra's Project Audit Wizard to allocate the appropriate MR.
If you choose not to continue, the change request does not advance, providing you the opportunity to change the requested amount in the change request or uncheck the Allocate Management Reserve option.
Negative BAC for the work package — This check is performed on each resource assignment in all of the work packages in the change request to see if the budget at complete (BAC) for any of the resource assignments in the work packages will be negative when the request is approved. The check stops at the first resource assignment that meets this criteria and provides a message similar to the following example:
The change amount 15,000.0 exceeds the BAC for Work Package 1.1.1/1212/01/ENG. Do you want to continue?
If you choose to continue, the BAC amount will be negative for the particular resource assignment.
If you choose not to continue, the change request does not advance, providing you the opportunity to change the requested amount in the change request for the resource.
All of the above checks rely on the calculation of the change amount. In order to calculate the change amount, PM Compass must determine the costs in the change class. The settings on the Change Details on Form tab of Workflow Type Configuration determine the costs in the change class:
A New or Change Amount — When this option is selected, the change class in the sandbox project contains the change amount.
A Replacement of Existing Time Phased Data — When this option is selected, the change class in the sandbox project is initialized with a copy of the original amount.
View the Change class in Workflow Type Configuration