Projects

Break engineering and contract work into elements, charge time, material and purchases to them, and compare plan with actual cost.

A project holds a tree of : the systems, requirements, tasks and tests that make up the work. Jobs, purchase order lines, purchase invoice lines, timesheets and material issues charge their cost to a project or to one of its elements. The records each charge, so you can compare it with the plan.

Open Projects in the sidebar. The module has Projects, My Time, Approvals and Reports, then a Setup group with Labor Categories and Planning Groups. Approvals shows when timesheet approval or DCAA mode is on, or while contract billable items wait for review, with the number of entries and items that wait for you.

The Plan page lists a project's elements by state.

The project

Click Add Project on the project list. The New Project drawer asks for the name, the identifier, the cost treatment, the customer and the owner, and can copy another project. Every other field is on the project's Settings page. A new project starts in "Draft".

FieldType
What the project is called.
2 to 6 capital letters or digits that start with a letter, such as SNS. It is unique in the company. If you leave it empty, Carbon makes one from the initials of the name. You cannot change it after you save, because every element id starts with it.
Where the project's cost posts: Statistical, Expense, Contract or Capitalize. See cost treatment.
An account that replaces the account default for this project. Leave it empty to use the default. Not shown for Capitalize.
Capitalize only. The Construction in Progress fixed asset class that holds the project's assets while they are built.
On a new project only, under Start from a copy. Copies another project's milestones, elements, trace links and plan lines. Templates are listed first.
The customer the work is for, if any.
The person responsible for the project.
The site the project belongs to.
Urgent, High, Medium, Low or None.
The planned window of the project.
Settings page, Plan lock. When this milestone is completed, the plan changes only through a change request.
Settings page, Stock and planning. The project owns the stock received for it. You can change it only while the project is Draft. See project stock.
With project stock. Charges the project when its stock is received, not when the stock is issued.
With project stock. The project's stock can move only to a project of the same customer.

Edit these fields later on the project's Settings page. The identifier shows there as read-only text.

The project workspace

A project opens on its Overview. The header shows the identifier, the name and the status. Click the name to switch to another project. The ⋯ menu changes the status, and opens Baselines, Change requests, Copy project and Template.

The project sidebar has, from the top:

  • The plan picker. It reads Current plan, or the change request you work in. The history icon next to it opens Baselines.
  • Overview: the owner, customer, dates and cost treatment on one line, the budget used, the next milestone, and Needs attention. That list names a stop-work order, borrows past their payback date, open change requests and time not posted yet.
  • Plan: the elements. The element tree and its Search elements box show below the links on every project page.
  • Schedule: the milestones on a timeline.
  • Costs: the cost of each element. Below it, Stock shows once the project holds stock of its own, Pegging once it has a peg, and Billing on every Contract project. With no project contract, the Billing page offers New Project Contract.
  • Time: the time not posted yet, then the costs posted to the project.
  • Settings, at the bottom: the project's fields, its members and budget control.

Status lifecycle

The project status controls which charges the project accepts. The ⋯ menu in the project header moves it, with the next step first.

StatusMenu item that sets itWhat the project accepts
"Draft"(new project)Structure, plan lines and budget. No charges.
"Released"Release, Resume, ReopenNew charges and postings.
"On Hold"Put on holdPostings against existing purchase order lines and jobs. No new charges.
"Work Complete"Work completeLate receipts, invoices and job completions, and reversals. No new charges.
"Closed"CloseNothing. The project is read-only.
HEADS UP

Close is final.

A Closed project cannot go back to any other status, and there is no project delete. Carbon refuses Close while the project has an open purchase order or an open job.

Cost treatment

The decides which account a project charge posts to. Carbon reads it when each charge posts.

TreatmentWhere the cost posts
StatisticalThe charge keeps its own account, and the project is only a dimension on the journal line. Time posts no cost. An issue goes to Indirect Materials & Services.
ExpenseThe project's Cost Account, else the Project Expense account default.
ContractThe project's Cost Account, else the Project WIP account default.
CapitalizeThe asset under construction that the charge builds. See capital projects.

Set Project WIP and Project Expense at Accounting → Default Accounts. If an Expense or Contract project has no account, Carbon refuses its charges.

NOTE

Statistical projects show no actual cost for time and issues.

A Statistical project has no project account, so its time and issues write no project ledger rows. Its posted hours still count. Use Expense or Contract when you want the Costs page to show actual cost.

Capital projects

A Capitalize project builds fixed assets. When you release it, Carbon creates one asset under construction for the project and one for each element marked Final asset on its element page. Each charge posts to the asset of its nearest final-asset element, else to the project's asset. A job on a Capitalize charge number completes into that asset.

Place in service in the project header's ⋯ menu, or on a final-asset element, moves the assets into an in-service class. The final-asset elements and everything below them move to a Completed state. A cost that posts after that adds to the in-service asset, and its depreciation spreads the addition over the asset's remaining life. See fixed assets.

Elements

An element is one item of the project tree. It has a type, a state, an owner, a priority, labels, dates, a milestone, an hours estimate and a budget.

  • Types: System, Requirement, Function, Task, Test Case and Parameter. A Parameter's children must be Parameters.
  • Linked part: any element except a Parameter can link an item and, for a serial-tracked item, one serial of it. Issue material then offers the part's bill of materials first.
  • Readable id: the project identifier and a sequence number, such as ST-12. The id stays the same when you move the element.
  • Chargeable: on for a new element, except a Parameter, which can never take charges. Turn it off on an element that only groups others.

Deleting an element also deletes every element below it. Carbon refuses the delete if that branch has costs, time, a job or a purchase order line.

States

States and labels are shared by every project of the company. Each state belongs to a state group: Backlog, Unstarted, Started, Completed or Cancelled. A company starts with Backlog, Todo, In Progress, In Review, Done and Cancelled. Manage states, labels and their colours at Settings → Projects, which needs the Settings update permission. The first charge to an Unstarted element moves it to the default Started state.

NOTE

The state group decides whether an element takes charges.

A new charge needs a Released project and an Unstarted or Started element. A posting against an existing commitment, such as a receipt or an invoice, also accepts a Completed element. Backlog and Cancelled elements accept nothing.

The Plan page

The Plan page shows the elements in one of three layouts. Pick it in the toolbar:

  • List groups the elements by state. Click the state icon on a row to change the state, and set the owner and target date in place. + on a group header adds a Task in that state.
  • Tree groups the children of each element in one box and draws the trace links between them. Drag from one element to another to add a link. Focus on a box shows only that part of the tree, and the breadcrumb goes back up. The type filter keeps the boxes, so the tree holds together. Click N tests or N reqs on a card to highlight its links.
  • Reader shows the project as a numbered document. The Export PDF icon downloads it with the current filters.

Filter narrows the elements by type, state, owner, milestone or label. Search elements, above the element tree in the sidebar, searches every layout. New Element adds a Task, and its menu adds any other type or opens Build from part. In the List the new element appears as a row; in the Tree and the Reader its page opens.

The element page

Click an element in any layout or in the sidebar tree to open its page. Its header has Back, the project and the parent elements, a copy button and a ⋯ menu: Log time, Issue material, Charge cost, Add child, Add link, Add plan line and Delete.

The main column has the readable id, the name and the description, then Children, the costs, Links and Activity. Children and Links show only once they have content. With Linear or Jira connected, Sync sits to the right of the readable id. The costs have two tabs: Estimated holds the plan lines, and Actual lists the costs and the open time charged to the element. The page opens on Estimated while the project is Draft, and on Actual once it is released. Activity holds the comments, and the change history when the audit log is on.

The properties column on the right edits the state, owner, priority, labels, milestone and dates in place. The Work group holds Chargeable, the budget, the hours estimate and the linked part. Costs, with children shows plan, committed, actual and remaining, and View costs opens the element on the Costs page.

Estimated shows each plan line as a card: its estimate, what has been charged against it so far, and a bar that turns red once the line is over its estimate. Each card has one button to charge more: Issue on a material, Log time on a labor line and Charge on a cost. A material's estimate is its quantity times its unit cost; a labor line's is its hours at its category's cost rate. Click a card to edit the line, and use Add line to add one:

  • Material: an item, a method (Pull from Inventory, Purchase to Order or Make to Order), a quantity, a unit cost and a required date. Create Job on a Make to Order line and Create PO Line on a Purchase to Order line, both in the row's menu, make the job or purchase order line with the element's charge number.
  • Labor: a , hours and dates.
  • Cost: a description and an amount. Charge posts a cost to the element with that description, which is how the card counts what has been charged against it.

Add Job, under Add child, opens the job form for the element: a part, tool or service, the quantity and the rest of a new job, with the element as its charge number and its target date as the due date. On an Expense or Contract project the job consumes to the project. The element lists its jobs under its children from the moment they exist, each with its status, how many it has completed and its due date. It is on a project's elements only, and needs permission to create jobs.

Add Purchase Order, below it, opens a modal for a purchase order line charged to the element, with no plan line. The line buys an item, a GL account or a fixed asset, on the supplier's Draft purchase order or a new one, and you land on the order. An item's price starts at the supplier's price for that quantity, else the item's unit cost, and you can change it. A GL account line takes its account only on a Statistical project; on the others it debits the project's account. A fixed asset line adds to the asset's cost and charges the project nothing. Every line shows under the element from the moment it exists.

Actual shows each cost and each open time entry charged to the element and the elements below it as a card. Its Charge menu issues material, logs time or charges a cost. On both tabs you can search the cards, filter them by type and change their order.

Milestones

A is a dated window, such as a design review or a phase. Each element can belong to one milestone. The Schedule page lists the milestones with a bar each on a Weekly, Monthly or Quarterly timeline, and tints the current period. Click New Milestone to add one.

Click a milestone to open its drawer: its status (Active, Upcoming or Completed), dates, elements completed, hours and cost, and a burn chart of its posted hours against an ideal line from its start date to its end date. Complete, Reopen, Edit and Delete are in the drawer and in the row's menu.

Requirements, tests and parameters

A Requirement, a Test Case and a Parameter each have a group of their own in the properties column of the element page.

  • A Parameter is a value with a unit. Its source is Manual, Sum of children, Smallest child, Largest child, Formula or Linked part. A formula such as = SNS-20 - SNS-21 uses readable ids, numbers, + - * /, min, max and abs. Linked part reads the unit cost or a numeric custom field of the nearest linked part above it. A Parameter can carry an Allocation of its parent Parameter and a Contingency.
  • A Requirement has a category, a target (≤, ≥, = or a range) and the Parameter that measures it.
  • A Test Case has a verdict and the quality procedure it runs.

A Requirement passes when its Parameter meets the target, with any contingency applied, and no Test Case that verifies it has failed. Units are free text and never convert.

A trace link connects two elements of one project: satisfies, verifies, derives, implements, blocks, precedes, relates to and feeds. Add them with Add link in the element's ⋯ menu, in its Links section, or in the Tree layout. A formula writes its own feeds links.

When the name, description, target or Parameter value of an element changes, its incoming links . The Tree draws them with an amber border (Needs review in its legend) until someone clicks Mark reviewed in the Links section.

Templates and Build from part

Mark a project as a Template in the header's menu. Copy project opens a new project with Copy from set to it. A copy starts in "Draft" with no charges, time or assets.

Build from part, in the New Element menu of the Plan page, creates System elements under a parent element from one of three sources:

  • Serial: what was consumed to build a serial, each element linked to its consumed serial.
  • Item: the item's bill of materials. Bought components are left out unless you turn on Include bought components.
  • Template: the elements of a template project.

Choose a depth from 1 to 5. The drawer previews the elements before it creates them.

WBS codes

Each element has a , such as 1.3.2. Carbon numbers the tree by position: a top-level element is 1, 2, and a child takes its parent's code and its own position. A Parameter and the elements below it get no code. When a code ends in .0, its children drop the .0, so the children of 1.0 are 1.1, 1.2, as MIL-STD-881F numbers them.

  • Pin a code: type it in WBS code on the element page. A pinned code stays when the element moves. Clear the field to go back to the derived code.
  • Pin WBS codes: in the Plan page's WBS menu, pins every derived code of the project at once. Do this when the codes match the contract WBS.
  • Renumber WBS: in the element page's menu, clears the pinned codes of the element and everything below it.

The Plan page's list and the sidebar tree show the codes once the project has a pinned code. A warning marks a code that two elements share; the exports refuse until you change one.

Start from MIL-STD-881F

Copy from in New Project lists four MIL-STD-881F starter structures, levels 1 to 3: Appendix B (Electronics/Avionics/Generic Systems), A (Aircraft Systems), C (Missile/Ordnance Systems) and F (Space Systems). The project starts with every code pinned. An element with children is a System, a leaf is a Task. Rename the "1...n (Specify)" elements for your program.

Export and import

The Plan page's WBS menu has:

  • Export CSV: one row per element in tree order, with Element ID, WBS Code, Parent WBS Code, Level, Type, Name, Start, Target, Budget and Predecessors (the codes of the elements that precede it).
  • Import CSV: reads the same columns. A row with an Element ID updates that element, and a blank cell keeps its value. A row without one creates an element under its Parent WBS Code. The modal shows every create, update and error first; Apply writes nothing while a row has an error. An import never deletes an element or a link, and it is refused once the plan is locked.
  • Export MS Project XML: the WBS as a Microsoft Project XML file, which MS Project, Primavera P6 and Deltek Cobra import. A leaf carries its budget and a Start No Earlier Than constraint on its start date, the latest baseline is Baseline 0, and the Text1 to Text3 fields hold the element id, the control account and the work package flag.

Baselines and change requests

The plan of a project is its elements, their names, types, budgets, estimates, part links, Requirement targets and Parameters, the trace links and the plan lines. State, owner, priority, labels, dates, milestone, verdict and comments are progress. Baselines, change requests and the plan lock cover the plan only. Progress stays editable at all times.

Baselines

A baseline is a read-only copy of the plan. Open Baselines from the history icon at the top of the project sidebar or from the header's ⋯ menu. Click Take Baseline, or complete a milestone, which takes one named after it. Click a baseline to compare it with the current plan, or use Compare with… in its menu to compare two baselines. The compare lists each changed element in tree order, with its changed fields, plan lines and trace links.

Change requests

A change request is a draft set of plan changes with a title and a reason. Choose New change request in the plan picker at the top of the project sidebar, or click New Change Request on the Change requests page (the header's ⋯ menu). The Plan page then opens with a banner, and every plan change goes into the change request. The current plan does not change. To open another change request, or to go back to the current plan, use the plan picker. Rows the change request adds, changes or removes show Added, Modified or Removed in the List layout. Click Leave to go back to the current plan, and Review to open the change request.

The review page shows one card per changed element. Reviewers comment on a changed field or on the element, mark each element Viewed, and resolve comments. A Viewed mark clears when the element changes again in the change request.

  1. Submit sends a Draft for review.
  2. Approve applies the changes to the plan in one step and takes a baseline named "After" the change request. Reject sends it back with notes.
  3. Reopen turns a Rejected change request back into a Draft.

If an approval rule for project change requests exists, its approvers decide. Approval rules are available on the Business plan. Without a rule, anyone who can update projects approves.

HEADS UP

A change request applies whole, or not at all.

If the current plan changed a row after the change request changed it, approval does not apply it. The page lists the conflicting rows. Click Reopen, check the rows, then submit again. A change request cannot delete an element that has costs, time, a job or a purchase order line.

A formula cannot change inside a change request. Leave the change request to edit it.

Plan lock

Set Lock Plan After Milestone on the project's Settings page, under Plan lock. When that milestone is completed, a plan change outside a Draft change request is refused, and New Element on the Plan page is disabled with the lock message as its tooltip. Open a change request from the plan picker to change the plan.

Charge numbers

A is a project, or a project and one of its elements. The picker lists Released projects and their chargeable elements in an Unstarted or Started state. A Charge Number field is on:

  • Jobs. You can change it while the job is Draft or Planned. After release it is fixed.
  • Purchase order lines. On the item tab and on the G/L Account tab. An outside processing order has no picker, because its job decides the charge.
  • Purchase invoice lines. A line converted from a purchase order copies the charge number of its PO line.
  • Reimbursement lines. Each line takes a charge number. Charge lines show their charge number read-only.

Settings → Projects → Require an element on every project charge is off by default. Turn it on to make every charge name an element.

Consume to project

A new job with a charge number has a Consume to project switch. When it is on, the job's material, labor and overhead post to the project account. When the job completes, nothing goes into stock, because the project consumes the output.

The switch turns on by itself for an Expense or Contract project. It is not available for a Statistical project, a job that does not complete to inventory, or a job for a sales order line.

Time

Employees record hours against a charge number and a labor category. Each hour costs the category's rate on the entry date.

  • Log time, in the element page's ⋯ menu, records hours on one date.
  • My Time shows one week. The charge numbers you worked on are on the left, each with its hours for the week, and the week total is under them. Each day is a column with one bar per charge number, as tall as its hours. Select a charge number, then click a day below its bars to add time up to that point. Drag the lower edge of a bar to change its hours, in half-hour steps, or click × to delete it. Every change saves at once. Add adds a charge number, PTO adds a leave element for time off, and Submit week sends the Draft hours; its tooltip says what the week still needs. When the week has time cards, each day shows your clocked hours, in orange where they differ. My Time is also in the user menu, and needs only an employee role.
  • My Time in the MES shows the same week of bars for operators on the shop floor, sized for touch: tap a charge number, then tap a day to add time.

A entry moves through "Draft", "Submitted", "Approved" and "Posted". A "Rejected" entry is editable again.

Time that is not posted yet lists on the project's Time page and on an element's Actual tab, each row with its next step: Submit week on your own draft time, Approve on submitted time (Post when approval is off), or Open My Time when the weekly certification or a review must handle it.

HEADS UP

You correct posted time. You do not edit it.

A Posted entry is locked. On My Time in the ERP, open the posted bar's menu and choose Correct, then give the new hours and a reason. Carbon reverses the posted hours and charges the new hours instead.

Approvals

Settings → Projects → Require approval of timesheets is off by default, so submitted time posts at once. Turn it on to hold submitted time on the Time tab of Projects → Approvals. Approve or reject each entry, or use Approve all and Reject all for an employee's week. The Billing tab holds the billable items to review. An approved entry posts at once, and a rejection needs a note. Approving needs the Projects update permission.

Labor categories

A labor category is the cost class of an hour, such as Engineer II. Create them at Projects → Labor Categories. The category's Rates grid keeps a history of Cost Rate and Bill Rate by Effective From date: New adds a row. Expense and Contract time cannot post without a rate on its date. Set a person's default category on their Job tab in People.

Issue material

Issue material, in the element page's ⋯ menu, takes stock from a storage unit and charges it to the element. Return to stock brings it back. Inventory → Issue to Project does the same with a charge number picker. The stock leaves at its carrying cost.

Log time and Issue material are not available on a Closed project or an element that does not take charges.

Project stock

A project with Project stock owns the stock received for it. Stock that belongs to no project is .

  • A purchase order line charged to the project receives into its stock. So does a job with Receive to project stock.
  • A job or an issue for the project draws the project's stock first, then unassigned stock. Other demand draws unassigned stock only. A sales shipment always ships unassigned stock.
  • Stock received into the project is inventory, not project cost. The project is charged when the stock is issued, or at receipt with Charge at receipt.

Inventory → Quantities filters by Stock owner. The item's storage units list each owner's stock on its own, and an inventory count gives each owner its own line, with a Stock Owner column. Once the project holds stock of its own, Stock shows under Costs in the project sidebar. The page lists the project's stock by item, location, storage unit and lot or serial, the borrows it owes and has lent, and its latest transfers. A borrow past its due date shows in red.

Planning

MRP plans a project with project stock on its own, as described in planning. The project's plan-line materials are its demand. When unassigned stock has more than it needs, MRP suggests a Transfer into the project; what is still short becomes an Order or Make for the project, charged to it. The project's manager owns these suggestions. An open borrow past its payback date shows under Needs attention on the project's Overview, linked to the Stock page.

Planning groups

Paid

A planning group lets projects with project stock share supply of the same parts. MRP plans the members as one, so one order covers all of their demand. Each piece of that order is still assigned to a member, and it becomes the member's stock when it arrives.

Open Projects → Planning Groups and click New:

FieldType
Unique in the company.
Only projects at this location can join.
Earliest Need gives the group's supply to the earliest need date first. Project Priority gives it to the member with the lowest Planning Priority first.
Where received stock goes when no member needs it: Unassigned stock or Exception project.
The project that takes the excess. Required with Exception project, and it must have project stock.
The members of an inactive group are planned on their own.

A project joins on its Settings page, under Stock and planning, after you save it: set Planning Group and Planning Priority. The fields show once the project has project stock and the company has a planning group. The project must have project stock and be at the group's location. You cannot delete a group while it has members, or purchase order lines or jobs made for it.

An order that MRP places for the group belongs to the group, not to one project. MRP pegs each part of it to a member's demand:

  • A Soft peg sits on an order that has not arrived. MRP may move it on any run. A soft peg on a purchase order counts in the member's Committed cost.
  • A Hard peg is made when the order is received, or when the job completes. The receipt or the job's output is split into one piece of stock per member, at its cost. MRP never moves a hard peg. What no member needs follows the excess rule.
  • A Manual peg is a planner's choice, made with a reason. MRP keeps it. If its demand goes away, the peg shows an exception.

A price difference on the supplier's invoice is split over the members' pieces. On stock already used, each member's share is charged to its project as material variance. When one member is short and another has stock it does not need, MRP suggests a Transfer, or a Borrow with a payback date when the other member needs the stock back later.

Once a member project has a , Pegging shows under Costs in its sidebar. The page lists the group's orders that are for the project, with quantity, need date, state and element. Choose an As of date to see the pegs on that day. Override, in a peg's row menu, replaces a soft peg with a manual peg on another open order of the group.

Transfers, borrows and paybacks

Another project's stock needs a transfer first. On the project's Stock page, click Transfer, or choose Borrow or Payback from its menu. Pay Back is also in the row menu of a borrow, and All transfers opens the full list. Add the lines while the transfer is Draft. A user who can update projects approves it, then posts it.

  • Transfer moves stock between two owners at its cost. Either owner can be unassigned stock.
  • Borrow moves stock from one project to another until a payback due date. The stock moves at the lender's cost, and the borrower owes it back at that cost.
  • Payback returns borrowed stock. The borrower's stock leaves at its current cost, and the lender gets it back at the cost it lent. When the returned stock cost more or less, the borrower takes the difference as Payback Variance, on its project and in the inventory adjustment variance account.

Costs and the project ledger

The Costs page rolls each element up with its children, and adds a Project total row:

  • Plan: material, labor and other plan lines.
  • Budget: the budgets set on the element and below it.
  • Committed: the value of purchase order lines not yet received.
  • Allowable and Unallowable: the project ledger total, split by allowability.
  • Remaining: budget less committed and actual.
  • Estimate: the element's estimate at completion, else the larger of plan and committed plus actual.

Click an element to open a drawer with its ledger rows. The Time page lists the time not posted yet, then the whole project ledger under Costs posted. The ledger only grows: a void or a correction adds a negative row.

NOTE

Some actual cost needs accounting.

Time, issues, receipts, charges and reimbursements write ledger rows in every company. Job material, job time and purchase invoices write ledger rows only when accounting is on.

Indirect rates

Paid

Indirect rates spread fringe, overhead and G&A cost over the projects that cause it, as a government contractor does. Carbon computes each pool's rate every month, puts burden on your projects, and bills it on Cost Plus contract lines.

Pools

Open Accounting → Indirect Pools and click New:

FieldType
Unique in the company.
Fringe, Overhead, Material Handling, G&A or Service Center.
The order in which pools compute. A later pool takes the burden of an earlier one, so fringe on indirect labor goes into overhead.
What the rate applies to: Total Labor Dollars, Direct Labor Dollars, Direct Labor Hours, Direct Material Dollars, Total Cost Input or Value Added.
The account that applied burden credits.
The burden run burdens project cost with this pool. Not for a Service Center pool.
Overhead pools only. Subtracts the overhead your work centers already applied from each project's burden.
An inactive pool computes no rate and burdens nothing.

Open a pool and click Add under Accounts to map a GL account to it. Cost is pool cost, the top of the rate. Base is part of what the rate applies to. A mapping can narrow the account to one dimension value, such as a department. One account is the cost of at most one pool. Project labor and material come into the base from the project ledger, by the project's cost objective, so a project account cannot be a Base account.

Rates and the period run

Open Accounting → Indirect Rates and pick a fiscal year. The page lists the year's period runs. Rates, in the ⋯ menu, opens a grid of each pool's year-to-date rate by period, for the rate types Provisional, Target, Actual and Final.

  • Set Rate, in the Rates drawer, enters a Provisional, Target or Final rate from a period to the end of the year.
  • Locking an accounting period starts the period run. Run Period starts it by hand. The run computes the Actual rates, posts the burden catch-up to your projects, and bills burden on Cost Plus lines.
  • Run True-Up appears in the ⋯ menu when every pool that applies to projects has a Final rate for period 12. It burdens the year again at the Final rates and bills the difference.

Burden posts only into a Locked period. Each run posts the year-to-date burden less the burden already posted, so a rate change during the year is caught up on the next run. Unallowable cost stays out of a pool's rate and stays in its base.

Burden Settings, at Settings → Accounting, picks the rate the run applies, Provisional or Actual. Burden rows are memo rows in the project ledger. Post applied burden for Contract projects also posts them to the general ledger: debit Project WIP, credit the pool's applied account.

Statement, in the ⋯ menu, opens the Statement of Indirect Expenses for a period: each pool's accounts, the burden it carries from earlier pools, and its cost, base and rate. ICE Export downloads the incurred cost schedules A, B, C, E, G, H, I, K and L of the year, one CSV each.

Burden on projects and contracts

The Costs page of a burdened project lists Burden by pool, allowable and unallowable, under the element tree. Hover over an element's Allowable amount to see how much of it is burden.

A Cost Plus contract line bills burden at the Final rate when one exists, else at the Provisional rate, plus the line's fee. On the line's billing page, Rate Ceilings caps a pool's rate for that line. Burden bills by difference, so a rate change or the true-up adds a positive or negative item, and a posted invoice never changes.

Budget control

Paid

Budget control checks each charge against the budget of its nearest budgeted element: the element itself, else the closest element above it with a budget. Set it on the project's Settings page, under Project Control:

FieldType
None, Warn or Block.
How far over the budget a charge may go before the check reports it. Empty reads as 0 %.
Receipt counts material when it is received. Issue counts it when project stock is issued (earned value only).

The check adds the new amount to the element's open purchase order lines and its direct actual cost. It runs when you save a purchase order line, finalize a purchase order, issue material to the project, and save a job that consumes to the project. Warn saves the document and shows the overrun. Block refuses it.

NOTE

A timesheet is never refused.

The work decides where time is charged, not the money left. On a timesheet, Warn and Block both save the time and show a warning. Block also sends the project owner a "Budget exceeded" notification.

Earned value

Paid

Earned value compares the work done with the plan and the cost. Set it up on the element page, under Earned Value in the Government contracting properties, which show in DCAA mode:

  • Turn on Control account on the element that a control account manager owns. Pick the Control account manager.
  • On a chargeable element below a control account, pick a Technique. That element is a work package.
TechniquePlanned value (BCWS)Earned value (BCWP)
0/100All at the end dateAll when the element is completed
50/50Half at the start date, half at the end dateHalf when started, all when completed
Percent CompleteSpread over the datesThe budget times Percent complete
MilestoneEach child element's budget at its target dateThe completed child elements
Level of EffortSpread over the datesEqual to the planned value
ApportionedSpread over the datesFactor times the Base element's earned value

The budget at completion (BAC) and the dates come from the latest baseline. Take a baseline before you read earned value. Actual cost (ACWP) is the direct cost in the project ledger below the work package.

Once the project has a control account, the Costs page shows earned value below the element tree: one row per control account, with its work packages below it. The columns are BAC, Planned value, Earned value, Actual cost, cost variance (CV), schedule variance (SV), the cost and schedule performance indexes (CPI, SPI), the estimate at completion (EAC) and the variance at completion (VAC). A CPI or SPI below 1 shows in red. EAC is ACWP plus the remaining budget divided by CPI.

Pick Current or a closed period in the period picker. Current is live. A closed period shows the snapshot that Close Earned Value took on the period close page while the period was locked. The snapshot never changes after the period closes. For a closed period, Export ACWP downloads its actual cost by charge number and element of cost, in hours and amounts, direct and burden, for an earned value tool such as Cobra.

Stop-work orders

Paid

A customer can order work on a contract to stop for 90 days (FAR 52.242-15). On a Released project with the cost objective Direct, open the ⋯ menu in the project header and click Stop work. Enter the order date.

The project goes "On Hold": it takes no new charges, and open purchase orders and jobs still post. The project's Overview shows the order date and the end date 90 days later under Needs attention. While the order is open, the header's ⋯ menu offers Resume work in place of the status changes, and only it releases the project and clears the order.

Keyboard shortcuts

⌘⇧E opens Plan, ⌘⇧M Schedule, ⌘⇧C Costs, ⌘⇧H Time and ⌘⇧S Settings (Ctrl instead of ⌘ on Windows). While they show in the sidebar, ⌘⇧K opens Stock, ⌘⇧P Pegging and ⌘⇧I Billing. On the Plan page, N adds an element. On the element page, T logs time and I issues material. Press ? for the full list.