Performing cash flow analysis enables you to develop an idea about the financial health and liquidity of your business and determine what is available for you to be used for your business needs. In Unifier, you can perform cash flow analysis based on the following information when using Planned costs, Remaining costs, and Actual costs, from the activity sheet:
- Budgets
- Forecast projections
- Actuals
Unifier uses the Cash Flow module to determine the financial health of portfolio of projects, or a single project, or contracts. You can use the Activity Sheet data as a source for the cash flow curves. Furthermore, you can bring the activities, or assigned resources units or costs, into the cash flow in order to track the Budget, Baseline, Forecast, and Spends estimates and compare them to see the distribution over time.
When you use Unifier Activity Sheet to manage activities and resource assignments from P6, you can track the Baseline, Forecast, and Actual (Spends) estimates in the cash flow by using the activity sheet data.
You can manage scheduling in P6, and you can manage costs either in P6 or Unifier (depending on the schedule type).
When you use P6, you bring the activities, resource assignments, and spread data from P6 into the Unifier Activity Sheet, and from the Activity Sheet the costs and units are rolled up to the Cost Sheet, by way of the CBS Code, and into the Earned Value Management module.
You can use an activity sheet, as a schedule source in:
- Project or shell detail level
- Data from early start and late finish date from activity sheet
- Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS) detail level
- Data from CBS code assign to the activities in the activity sheet
- Summary CBS detail level
- Date of the summary CBS code in the activity sheet
Cash flow can support Activity Sheet Schedules in the following cash flow curves:
- Baseline curve
- Forecast curve
The following is an example for how to create a cash flow based on an Activity Sheet schedule:
Go to your project or shell, in User mode.
- From the left hand Navigator, click Financial Reporting node to expand.
- Click Cash Flow sub-node to open the Cash Flow log.
- Click Create to open and select Manual. The New Cash Flow Worksheet log opens.
The New Cash Flow Worksheet log has two panes with the following toolbar options, blocks and fields:
Toolbar options:
- Cancel
- Save & Close
General block:
- Name
- Description
- Detail Level
To select the needed detail level, for example project or shell.
- Filter CBS Codes
- Filter Summary CBS Codes
- Rollup cashflow data to company/program?
Time Scale block:
- Period Type
- By
- Format
Right-hand pane:
- Curves
To select the needed curve, for example baseline curve. When you select a curve, the curve window, for example Baseline window, opens. In this window you can select values for the following:
- Cost
Options include a manual cost creation or from cost sheet columns such as: Approved Budget Revisions, Initial Budget, Pending Budget Revisions, and so forth.
- Schedule
To establish a schedule manually, or use dates from a schedule sheet, or use dates from an activity sheet. Depending on your initial selection, the picker field enables you to open a window and specify your selection.
Example
You can select a type of active manual activity sheet (custom, import, manual, or profile) or the System Activity Sheet in the Select Activity Sheet window. The inactive manual activity sheets will not be displayed in the Select Activity Sheet window. In the Select Activity Sheet window, click Manual to open the curve type window (Baseline window). In the Baseline window, you can enter values for the following fields:
- Cost
- Schedule
If the manual activity sheet does not have a Baseline schedule, then only the "Current" schedule option will be made available, in the Project Type drop-down.
If you select a system activity sheet, then the date values (From Date) are from the system activity sheet attribute form.
- Project Type
- From Date
The values are from the manual activity sheet or the system activity sheet.
- To Date
- Distribution
You have the option of selecting a manual distribution, or a distribution based on a set profile which is displayed in the drop-down.
- Variance
When finished, click Add to go to the New Cash Flow Worksheet log.
In the New Cash Flow Worksheet log, right-hand pane, click the Curves drop-down field and select a pertinent option, such as Actuals. This will open the select option window (Actuals window). In the Actuals window, click to select the values for the following fields:
- Cost
- Variance
When finished, click Add to go to the New Cash Flow Worksheet log. In the New Cash Flow Worksheet log, right-hand pane, you will see the added curve, in this case Actuals.
Use the Curves drop-down field to select more curves, such as Forecast, and enter values for each curve.
When finished, click Add to go to the New Cash Flow Worksheet log. In the New Cash Flow Worksheet log, top right-hand corner, click Save & Close to create the cash flow.
When the Cash Flow log displays, you can click on a profile (from the left pane) to see the preview of the curve on the right pane.
- Click on a profile to open the profile window.
- Click on a curve type tab, for example Baseline, to see the details about that curve type.
At this point, for example, you can check the date values in the curve with the values in the manual activity sheet (Schedule Manager > Activity Sheet sub-node > manual activity sheet).
You can update your dates from the manual activity sheet, within the Activity Sheet sub-node. After changing the dates, click Save, click Actions, and click Update Baseline. When finished, go to the Cash Flow sub-node, find the item, open the item, and click Refresh to see the new dates.
If you select more than one item, or date, you can change the values by using the Bulk Edit option (toolbar option).
You can use the import and export features to update values.