The Cost Manager consists of the modules and features listed below.
- Cash Flow Curves — Cash flow is the distribution of cost over time; in other words, it is the movement of cash into or out of a project measured during a specific time period. Unifier displays this data using cash flow worksheets that can display baseline, spends, and forecast curves.
- Cost Sheets — Cost sheets capture data from data sources, such as cost code data values, budget, business processes by status, and manager sheets, for example Schedule Manager. Unifier dynamically updates the company cost sheet with information from project cost sheets.
- Funding Sheets — Funding sheets track company funding through allocation to, and consumption at, the project level.
- Schedules of Values — Unifier’s Schedule of Values (SOV) feature provides a way to assemble information from contract, change order, and invoice and payment business processes into an SOV sheet, streamlining the process of invoicing for completed phases of a project. There are two types of SOVs: Payment Application SOV and General Spends SOV.
Cost rules affect how users can work with modules and features listed above.
- The Budget must be greater than 0 — This rule validates that a budget line item cannot be reduced below $0.
- The Revised Budget must be greater than or equal to Approved Commitments — This rule validates revised budget (approved budgets, budget transfers and budget changes) vs approved commitments (approved contracts, change orders, purchase orders and po amendments)
- An Invoice must be less than or equal to Approved Purchase Orders and PO Amendments — This rule validates invoices (approved invoices) vs approved purchase orders (approved purchase orders and po amendments)
- A Payment Application must be less than Approved Contracts and Change Orders — This rule validates approved payment applications vs approved commitments (approved contracts, change orders)
The actions that can trigger a rule are:
- You attempt to "send" a business process record to the next step whose status activates the rule.
- For example, the rule may be designed to activate when a record gets to the Pending or Approved status.
- Data is loaded into a cost sheet manually.
- Web services calls create records.
- Records are auto-created from other records.
For more details about the following information refer to the Unifier User Guide.
- Defining the budget
- Work packages
- Worksheets
- Company cost sheet
- Funding Manager