Transaction Analysis for Project Planning Resource Assignments

Project application administrators can use the Transaction Analysis for Project Planning Resource Assignments report to analyze how a cost rate was calculated for project planning resource assignments. The report helps to identify causes where a cost rate can’t be determined or a cost rate value is not as expected.

Use the Transaction Analysis for Project Planning Resource Assignments Report to:

• Identify the root causes for planning resource assignment errors such as:
  • Rate wasn’t found for the person or person job.
  • Rate wasn’t found for the nonlabor transaction.
  • Application can't find a costing rule for the labor transaction.
  • A rate wasn't found for job X because the job doesn't exist in the job set or isn't mapped to another job in the job set.
• Understand how raw cost rates are derived for planning resource assignments. For example:
  • Was a labor costing override used?
  • Was a project cost rate override used?
  • Was the correct date-effective rate schedule entry used?
  • Was the correct organization costing rule used for the expenditure organization?
  • Was an actual cost rate or planning cost rate used?

Example

Let’s look at an example that describes how a project application administrator uses the Transaction Analysis for Project Planning Resource Assignments Report to assist a project manager in troubleshooting a costing error in the financial project plan, budget, or forecast.

1. A project manager encounters one or more costing errors when they create a project forecast. The project manager has to clear the errors before submitting the forecast for approval.
2. The project manager chooses an error to investigate first, for example 'A raw cost rate wasn't found for the planning transaction'.
3. The project manager makes a note of the following details, for example by taking a screenshot:
   • Project name
   • Financial plan type
   • Plan version
   • Task
   • Planning resource
   • Planning period
4. The project manager sends the above details to their project application administrator to help resolve this issue so that they can successfully submit the forecast.

A project application administrator can then help resolve this issue in the following manner:

1. Navigate to the Reports and Analytics work area.
2. Click Browse Catalog.
3. Navigate to Shared Folders > Projects > Projects Maintenance and open the Transaction Analysis for Project Planning Resource Assignments Report.
4. Enter the parameter values provided by the project manager and click Apply. The application downloads the report output.
5. Open the report output in Excel. The report has four sheets:
   • Report Details - Displays report parameter values and runtime details, such as the date the report was run and by which user.
   • Transaction Details - Provides a summary of key resource assignment attributes to assist analysis.
   • Transaction Errors - Provides a summary of any existing errors or warnings relating to the resource assignment.
   • Costing - Provides a detailed breakdown of cost processing and related setups.
6. Open the Costing sheet in the output report. The sheet has a number of sections, each of which has detailed guidance. To summarize:
   • Cost Processing - Where a resource assignment is already costed, this section shows the outcomes of those successful events.
   • Simulated Cost Processing - When the report is run, the resource assignment is reprocessed by costing in simulation mode. This serves two purposes:
     • To check whether the costing error reported in the application still exists. For example, since the error was raised another user may have fixed the costing setups, but has yet to revisit the resource assignment to clear the error.
     • Where a transaction has already been costed, you can compare the simulated outcome to the existing cost outcomes. You can, for example, identify where there have been any changes in costing setups since the transaction was processed. For transactions created before the 22D release, you won't see the Costing Date and Costing Method for previous cost processing.
   • Simulated Cost Processing Errors - Details any errors resulting from the simulated cost processing described above.
   • Cost Processing Setups - Lists out all of the application setups that relate to each of the costing methods that are used to calculate raw costs.
7. Assisted by conditional formatting, the project application administrator can see which costing setups (if any) are a match for the resource assignment being interrogated, and the order of precedence in which they are applied during costing. For example, the project application administrator may notice that:
   • There are labor costing overrides for the person associated with the resource assignment, but they're not date effective as of the planning date.
   • There are organization costing rules matching the expenditure business unit of the resource assignment, but they are not a match for the expenditure organization.
   • The planning options for the plan version are configured to use planning rates, as opposed to actual rates.
8. Depending on the root cause of the costing exception as identified above, the project application administrator can take the necessary corrective actions. For example, they could add a new organization costing rule for the relevant business unit and expenditure organization.
9. After updating the relevant application configuration, the project application administrator can rerun the report and check the Simulated Cost Processing section, to see if the error is cleared.
10. The project manager can then revisit their forecast (or budget or financial project plan, as applicable) to clear the error and successfully submit it for approval.