Hi there all,
In P6, I'm trying to assign the contractual payments of a purchased equipment but I could not find a satisfactory way to represent the situation. Let's say, I am planning to purcha an eqp. A which has the following activities according to the schedule:
A1000- Collection of Proposals
A1010- Evaluation of Proposals
A1020- Contract Negotiations
A1030- Contract Signing (as a milestone)
A1040- Delivery to Site
Plus, I have the following payments for the eqp.
P1: 1st Payment in May (may be an advance payment)
(NO PAYMENT IN JUNE)
P2: 2nd Payment in July
P3: 3rd Payment in August
(NO PAYMENT IN SEPTEMBER)
(NO PAYMENT IN OCTOBER)
P4: 4th Payment in November
As can be seen, there is an irregular distribution o payments which prevents me to assign all of them using expenses over activities as the expenses are assigned either at the start of activity/end of activity/uniform over the activity.
I decided to create a milestone activity for each payment (say A2000-Payment 1) under a WBS level named "Payments" and adjust the relationship with lags so that the activity date coincides with my payment periods. But that comes out to be an overburden since I have around a hundred equipments to be purchased.
Is there an easier or practical way that I can handle those kind of contractual payment costs?
Thanks in advance.
Regards.
Utku,
Maybe you shall assign a WBS level for your payments and another WBS level for your Receipts/Income, both under a common WBS on top of them. At times can be convenient to create dummy WBS on a chain as to get the activities to the level you want if you filter and report by WBS levles and/or by Phases.
Or invert level for Payments and Receipts - whatever fits your needs
I use software that allows me to define multiple WBS Dictionaries/Structures and I can leave out from secondary WBS dictionaries the activities I want, maybe P6 users can tell about the idea on P6 even if limited to a single WBS structure.
Another would be to Keep Payments and Receipts under separate but linked job.
It is about making it easier for you to control access and reporting; activity codes and filters can also be of help, but this is as far as I can go here. Remember all this is tied to how your software control access, maybe you do not want certain users to be able to see your payments history, financial data is usually considered confidential.
Keeping individual payments under separate activities gives you more control over the logic and over data confidentiality.
Best regards,
Rafael
Dear Utku,
The total cost of an activity, no matter budgeted or actual, is composed of the cost of resources and cost of expenses. Therefore, you can make use of expenses for the last payment. Just separate the last payment from your whole amount and assign it by using expenses with "Accural Type" of "End of Activity".
The main thing that you should bear in mind that to view the total cost ("At Completion Total Cost"), which consists of cost of resources and cost of expenses, as a sum, you shoud utilize "Activity Usage Spreadsheet" in the "Activities" sheet. You cannot use "Resource Assignment" sheet to see the effect of expense costs on the activity.
Hope this helps Utku.
Regards,
Baris
Dear Baris,
Thank you for your kindness to reply my post. The way you proposed worked perfectly. But I feel like going one step further and ask for help about another issue related to this topic.
In conjuction with my previous problem, let's say I have arranged all the payments using a common resource and then manually edited costs in each time interval specified. So far so good. Moreover, let's assume that my final payment has been planned to be made when the equipment is delivered to the site. Here is what I want: Final payment (delivery payment) should be delayed due to a possible delay in the delivery of the equipment. I mean is, if I plan to have the equipment on site & make its delivery payment in June, but for some reason in May, the equipment seems to be on site in July, then the final payment should shift to July too.
As far as I know, the manually edited cost can not be delayed in the way you proposed. I need to go back and edit the Remaining Units each time a delay occurs, which makes me think of creating seperate activities for each payment and adjust the relationship accordingly so that delay in the payment automatically occurs.
Do you have any suggestions related to this issue?
Thank is advance,
Regards,
Utku.
Dear Utku,
I should make a correction. You cannot edit Budgeted Cost. It should be "Remaining Units" instead. If you set Price/Unit of a resource equal to 1, this problem will be solved.
Regards,
Baris
Dear Utku,
I am not so sure that it is an easier way or not but my recomendation is as follows,
Hope this helps.
Baris