Best Practices

As with every update, we are keen to offer the ClearTrial-recommended best practices to ensure you are effective in your usage and budgeting operations.

• Lock your plans before sending out budgets to contract, when you are satisfied with your final operational budget forecast, and when you need to prevent assumption values from being changed.

• Freeze billing rates to ensure that existing rates are preserved in copies of locked plans, or anytime you are satisfied with your operational budget forecast.

• Upgrade existing plans and user-defined templates to the latest available Cost Model.

  Why? Upgrading plans and user-defined templates to the latest Cost Model ensures you are working with the latest updates to fees and costs included in both the ClearTrial-defined Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and default indirect (pass-through or miscellaneous) cost calculations.

  Note:

  Existing plans and user-defined templates are not automatically upgraded with each update that includes a new Cost Model.

Upgrading Existing Plans/Templates to the Latest Cost Model

If you need to determine the impact of upgrading existing plans or user-defined templates to the latest Cost Model, follow the steps below to quickly assess the impact to the budget.

1. From the Plan or Template list screen, copy the existing plan/template that you want to upgrade.

2. Update the Cost Model of the copy.

   1. Select the copied plan/template.
   2. Click Other Actions... and select Change Attributes.
   3. In the Change Plan Attributes dialog, select 5.8 from the Cost Model drop-down list.
   4. Click Save & Close.

3. From the list screen, select the original and its copy, and click Compare to run the comparison reports.

Impact of Unlocking a Plan Using a 5.2 or Prior Cost Model

When you unlock or copy an existing plan using a 5.2 or prior Cost Model, that plan will default to the latest available Cost Model.