3 Settings Tab

The Settings Tab allows you to establish tracking settings for a study, such as the tracking interval, study status date, and tracking payments for major tasks. All of these decisions are made in the Settings Tab, which includes three sub-tabs: Major Tasks, Costs, and Payments.

Tracking Settings

The default tracking settings are determined by your baseline plan, but these settings can be altered to fit your tracking needs.

Tracking Interval

You have two options for the time interval you can use to track the study progress: weekly or monthly. Monthly means your data is entered by month and weekly allows you to enter data for each week in the study. The option you pick affects the Study Status Date and how actuals are entered.

Study Status Date

The Study Status Date is the date through which you have complete study status information. Study status information includes data such as invoices received or the number of CRF pages collected. The date selection is bound by the selected tracking interval, either weekly or monthly.

The date you enter into the Study Status Field is the date you want ClearTrial to use as the cut-off date for earned value calculations. This date keeps incomplete data from being reported. Using an accurate Study Status Date ensures that earned values are accurately reflected.

If you prematurely advance the Study Status Date before you have entered a complete picture of your study's status, your results may be inaccurate. For example, if you have entered only half of the activity data for the month of September, leave the Study Status Date set to August 31.

Setting the Level of Detail for Tracking Tasks and Costs

For each cost, you have two options regarding the level of detail at which you want to track tasks and costs. These options affect how you view project performance and enter both actual progress and actual cost.

On the Settings Tab, use both the Major Tasks and Costs sub-tabs to select the following settings for each tracked study.

• Study Level: Select “Study Level” to track the major task, or cost, on a study-wide basis. (i.e. not tracking progress/cost for individual locations)

• Location Level: Select “Location Level” to track the major task, or cost, on a per location basis, making a separate entry for each location.

• Not Tracked: Select “Not Tracked” if you do not need to enter actuals for this major task, or cost. Note that once “Not Tracked” is selected, you cannot enter data or change the tracking settings once actuals have been entered.

Tracking Earned Value for Costs

The Cost sub tab has additional settings to designate how to capture Earned Value (EV) for miscellaneous or pass-through costs. EV is the amount of value (expressed in monetary terms) that has been earned, based on the work completed by a service provider.

• Enter AP Only (sets AP to EV): Select “Enter AP Only (sets AP to EV)” for a cost if you only need to enter what has been paid. For this selection, ClearTrial will set the earned value to be equal to what was entered for actual payment.

• Enter EV and AP: Select “Enter EV and AP” for a cost if you want to track separately what was reported as earned based on work completed and what is actually paid.

• Derived: Derived is defaulted for certain costs that are driven from other work that is completed. Only costs that are defined with a task-based cost driver are eligible for Derived.

Payment Tracking Options

The Payments sub-tab allows you to set your payment tracking options for each service provider included in the study.

Payments can be tracked at either the task or study level:

• Task Level: Select Task Level if you need to track actual payments at the Major Task Level. This option allows you to enter actual payments, for each of the Major Tasks in your study.

• Study Level: Select Study Level if you need to track payments at the Study Level. This option allows you to make one entry for labor fees and one entry for Costs (pass through and miscellaneous costs) for the entire study.

There are three options for how payments can be tracked:

• Pay for work completed upon milestone achieved: Select this option if you need to track actual payments according to the Milestone Payment schedule in the Baseline Plan and are paying for work completed upon milestone achieved. Note that this option is not available for tracking the sponsor's internal costs.

• Pay fixed fee upon milestone achieved: Select this option if you wish to track actual payments according to the Milestone Payment schedule in the Baseline Plan and are paying a fixed fee upon milestone achieved. Note that this option is not available for tracking the sponsor's internal costs.

• Enter AP Only (sets AP to EV): Select this option if you do not need to have detailed cost tracking. If you select this option, ClearTrial sets the service provider's payments to their completed work.