Free Project Training - Cost and Budget Resources in Project 2007

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Cost and Budget Resources in Project 2007

Previous to Project 2000 it was only possible to define work resources.  A work resource would be an employee or piece of equipment that has a percentage of its time assigned to a task.  A work resource requires a calendar as it can be scheduled to work on multiple tasks over time. 

Project 2000 introduced what it called a material resource, which is best thought of as a consumable resource such as fuel or a bag of nails.  For example if I had a task that involved moving office equipment from one location to another I might assign a vehicle as a work resource and fuel as a material resource.

With Project 2002 users were able for the first time to label resources as generic.  Generic resources refer to roles and skill sets rather than specific people.  Generic resources are primarily designed for Enterprise and therefore only appear in Project Professional.  Without the use of server functionality its use is fairly limited in that it can only provide a visual indicator in the resource sheet, showing a resource as generic.  Typically a generic resource would have a max unit setting greater than 100%: set at 500% the resource would indicate that there are 5 x 8hrs of work availability.  So for example we are not sure which individuals will complete tasks but we know that ultimately we have the equivalent of 5 persons availability with a specified skill set.

Cost and Budget resources are new to Project 2007. Cost resources are designed to capture ad hoc expenditure over the life of a project.  Cost resources are not calculated in a time bound way like a work resource, ie they are not costed per hour or per day.  Nor are they like material resources where there is a cost per unit, ie per length of timber or bag of cement.  Examples of cost resources might be travel expenses like train or air tickets where the expedenditure is not rated per hour or per unit of resource. By setting up a cost a resource you can then collect costs of a similar theme under one heading and enter individual values for that cost as you assign the resource to individual tasks.

Budget resources apply to all of the forementioned resource types.  A budget resource allows you to record intended work and cost values for the project overall. You can then compare these values with actuals.  Budget resources are applied to Project Summary tasks and values are entered in either the Task Usage or Resource Usage views by including both the Budget Cost and Budget Work fields.