Displaying Labor Cost on Financial Pages

This article explains the various options for displaying labor costs on Financials pages.

Overview

ResourceFirst provides options to display the cost of labor assignments as assignments on financial pages. Labor costs can be posted automatically to the Financial Assignments (summarized at a configurable level) or they can be manually submitted for each project.

[Note: All relevant labor cost assignments appear on all financial assignment pages (i.e., the global Financial Assignments page has labor cost assignments for all projects, and each project’s workspace Financials page has them for the project).]

The method used to create the labor cost assignments is:

• Calculate the cost of each labor assignment using the configured rate data
• Summarize labor assignments into labor cost assignments using the configured summarization fields

If automatic creation of labor cost is configured, the assignments are created/updated whenever a financial page is activated.

If manual creation is configured, the Post Labor Cost button appears on project workspace Financials pages. When that button is clicked, the labor cost assignments are created and updated on the workspace Financials page. The labor cost assignments for that project also appear on the global Financial Assignments page.

If using the manual method, project managers or someone with sufficient rights must post labor cost in every project workspace every month in order to have a complete, up to date global Financial Assignments page.

Post of actuals is not supported but can be provided upon request: contact your PDWare representative for options.

Automatic Posting of Labor Costs

To activate automatic posting of labor costs, the “Use Client Labor Cost Calculation” checkbox must be checked in Administration > Server Settings. See Server Settings and General Defaults in the Financial Labor Settings section for instructions. The setting also includes the Financial Labor Algorithm, which determines how labor costs are to be summarized on the Financial Assignments page.

When automatic posting of labor costs is activated:

Labor cost rows are updated or created dynamically upon visiting the Financial Assignments page, according to the summarization method configured in the Financial Labor Algorithm. For example, if Assignment Org and Country are listed as summary fields on the algorithm, then labor costs will be summarized at the OBS node (i.e., Assignment Org) and country level.

Thereafter during a session labor cost rows are recalculated only when there has been a change to labor demand on a labor assignments page. New labor cost rows are added if new labor assignments require it.

The alternative to using automatic labor cost posting is to go to the Project Workspace Financials page for a project and click Post Labor Cost.

Posting Labor Cost Manually

If the “Use Client Labor Cost Calculation” checkbox in Server Settings is unchecked, then labor cost posting must be done manually.

When posting labor costs manually (using the Post Labor Cost button on a project workspace Financials page), if only one project has had the Post Labor Cost submitted, the global financial Assignments page shows labor cost assignments for that project only.

To get labor costs for all projects on the global financial Assignments page, someone has to go to each project’s workspace financial page (typically monthly) and, after making sure the numbers are correct, click Post Labor Cost.

Impact of OBS License Key Settings

A unique ResourceFirst License Key setting has an important impact how labor costs can be posted.

License keys have 25 alphanumeric characters segmented in 5 character blocks separated by hyphens (XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX).

Additional key codes may be added to the end of the license key to set global system options.  System option key codes must be separated from the license key with a hyphen, e.g.  XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-LPV

If the key code has a “V” appended, it means financials are tied to the Resource OBS as opposed to the Cost Center OBS. If this code is not specified and the Cost Center OBS is used, rights to financials will be inherited via the project rights.

If you use the Resource OBS method (i.e., with the V), you can do automatic labor cost posting or choose to not have labor cost posted at all. You cannot use the manual method (the Post Labor Cost button will not appear). Financial authority will be inherited from the Resource OBS.

If you use the Cost Center OBS method (i.e., without the V), you cannot use the automatic labor cost posting method, and the Post Labor Cost button is always there. Financial authority will be inherited from the Project OBS.

For more on License Keys and how they impact system behavior, see License Keys and Codes – Appended Letters.

How To

Post Labor Cost Manually

Step 1: Drill down to the workspace of the specific project.

[To reach the project workspace, click the project name on the Project Data, Project Demand, or Assignments page in any row referencing the project, and click the arrow to drill down to the project workspace.]

Step 2: Go to the Financials tab on the project workspace.

Step 3: Click the Post Labor Cost button toward the left of the page toolbar.

Step 4: Select a start date for calculating labor cost and click the Post button.

 

For more on project financials, including labor and non-labor costs, see Project Financials.