Manage Costs on a Project Task
Managing Project Costs at the Task Level Projects can be a great resource to track expenses and ensure your team isn’t going over on their hours for specific tasks. There are various costs that can be managed on the project level, including expense line items, fixed POs, hourly vendor rates, and user rates.
Projects can also be leveraged to track user rates and compensation. Each user’s compensation is used to calculate their hourly rate, allowing you to keep track of your project budgets. For more information about how to manage and access user compensation, view the help center page ‘Tracking Project Utilization’.
When working with projects, you can assign specific users to the project. Those users can also be assigned to specific tasks within the project.
When a user is assigned to a task, they can record hours for that task in their weekly timesheets.
If the user has a compensation record in the system, then when they record hours for a project task in their timesheet, their hourly rate and their recorded hours will be used to calculate project labor costs.
The Project Metrics tab will summarize this information in the Budget & Costs section. Users can also view labor costs on the Project Status Report.
If you have access to the Compensation History page, you will also have access to the Work Effort Cost Report.
When a vendor is associated with your project, you can also attach one of that vendor’s POs to the project, and use the Project Metrics page to track your project costs.
When creating or editing a project, you can choose a vendor to associate with the project. Once a vendor is associated, you can choose one of that vendor’s POs to attach to the project as well.
Once a PO has been tied to the project, you can associate specific PO line items to the project tasks.
You will need to choose a Bill Type, either Fixed or Time depending on the PO line item’s Rate Type.
Then, choose the PO line item for the task. Once a PO item has been assigned, neither the PO item or the Bill Type can be edited or removed from the task.
Any POs attached to the project will show up on the Project Metrics tab under the Project Costs summary, on the ‘Approved PO Items’ line, allowing you to track your project expenses.
Once the PO has been invoiced, the total amount of the PO will display under ‘Invoiced PO Costs’.
You can associate vendors, vendor contacts, and POs with your projects. Once a vendor contact and a PO is set on your project, you can assign both to a specific project task. For more information about how your vendors interact with projects, view the help center page ‘Working with your Vendors on Projects’.
On the Project Overview page, click the edit icon in the Project Participants box. This will prompt a pop-up where you can view and edit all the project participants, including your vendor contact. Clicking on the vendor contact’s name will allow you to choose a PO line item as the contact's Rate Item.
Note
It must be a rate-based PO line item, rather than a unit based PO line item.
Once the vendor contact has a rate item, you can assign them to a project task. The vendor contact will then be able to record hours on their timesheet to that task in the Vendor Portal. Their rate will be calculated based on the Rate Item you associated with them for the project. A summary of this information will display on the Project Metrics tab, where you can track your expenses.
Users can associate expenses with projects and specific service items. Users can also associate a project milestone with a service ticket. All of that information is reflected on the Project Metrics tab under Budget & Costs, where each milestone will have a drop down that displays the associated expense items. An overview of the expenses will also show up under the Project Costs summary.
Once your project has been created, you will need to create an Expense Sheet by navigating to Billing > Expense Sheets and click Add New Expense Sheet.
When creating the expense sheet, choose the company and the order that you would like the expense sheet to be for. This should be the same order that you chose for your project. Choose the project you created, and click Save. If you had an existing Expense Sheet, you can simply edit it and associate the new project that way.
Click on the line items number of the expense sheet to view the expenses, and click Add New Expense Item. This will prompt a pop-up, where you can add a description of the item, the expense account, the cost of the expense and the date. Here, you can also choose a service item from the order to associate the expense.
When you navigate back to the project, the expense line item from the expense sheet will show up in the Project Metrics tab, under Budget & Costs. The task will have an arrow on its left that will either display or collapse the associated expense items for that task. Each expense line item’s total will display under the Sub-Costs column, with ‘Expense’ showing up under the Type column. The margin for the task will be calculated by subtracting the expense costs from the task’s budget, which is based on the price of the service item.
Important
The calculation only works if only one task is tied to a milestone that is tied to a service ticket. If multiple tasks are assigned to the same milestone, then the expenses will be duplicated. It assumes one line-item milestone is tied to a single task.
On the Project Metrics tab under the Project Cost summary, all of the expense items will be totaled for the ‘Expenses’ line. Once the Expense Sheet has been invoiced, the total of the invoice will display on the ‘Invoices’ line.
You can also view project expense reports by navigating to Projects > Project Expenses. To view this page, you need the user permission ‘Access Projects Billing Report.'