How Costs Map to Resources

You can track costs associated with every resource that's assigned to a task and use the resource breakdown structure to view the distribution of these costs. When costs are incurred, the application first checks for the best match in the resource breakdown structure. If not found, it tries to find the nearest match based on the rules of precedence.

The application attempts mapping from a lowest level resource format if the transaction associates to it. A three-level resource format (for example, Expenditure Type: Named Person: Job) is evaluated before evaluating a two-level resource format (for example, Expenditure Type: Named Person).

The application follows these rules to associate costs with resources:

  • If there is only one level to which the transaction associates, then costs are mapped to that level.

  • If the transaction associates with different resource formats, the application sums the precedence numbers for all resource types in the branch and gives precedence to the resource element in the branch with the lowest sum.

    • If more than one branch has the lowest precedence number at the lower level, the application uses the precedence number of the next level up.

    • If the sum of precedence numbers is the same for more than one branch, precedence is given to the branch with the lowest number at the lowest level.

    • If one branch contains a user-defined resource type, precedence is given to the branch that doesn’t contain a user-defined resource type.

Projects give more precedence to a lower precedence number. For example, a resource element with a precedence number of 1 is given precedence over a resource element with a precedence number of 10.

The following table lists the precedence numbers:

Resource Type

Precedence in Labor Resource Class

Precedence in Equipment Resource Class

Precedence in Material Items Resource Class

Precedence in Financial Resources Resource Class

Named Person

1

1

1

1

Project Nonlabor Resource

3

3

3

3

Inventory Item

5

5

5

5

Job

6

6

6

6

Item Category

8

8

8

8

Expenditure Type

9

9

9

9

Event Type

10

10

10

10

Expenditure Category

11

11

11

11

Revenue Category

12

12

12

12

Organization

13

13

15

15

System Person Type

14

14

14

14

Supplier

15

15

13

13

Resource Class

16

16

16

16