Understanding Projects

After you set up your Project Costing system, you can create projects and add activities to them. You can do this manually through Project Costing or by using batch processes and integration with other applications.

At the highest level, projects are managed within a project business unit. Within each project, costs are organized and analyzed by activity. Activities are the specific tasks that make up a project. During the course of an activity, transactions are created for such things as labor and materials. Transactions are attached only at the activity level. Project Costing organizes and groups these transactions to monitor and report on the conditions of a project. This diagram illustrates the hierarchy:

Hierarchy of business unit at the top, then project, then activity, and then transactions.

All project transactions are stored in the Project Transaction table (PROJ_RESOURCE). Project transactions provide the basis for project reporting, analysis, billing, and asset capitalization.