How Task Dates Work with Assignment Dates

Project application administrators can specify the task planned dates and task assignment date options when defining project planning options. These settings determine how planned and transaction dates are set for tasks and how dates are set for task assignments.

Want to see the settings? In the Setup and Maintenance work area, open the Manage Project Plan Types page in the Project Financial Management offering. Now, let's see what happens when you select or deselect the various settings.

Note: You can also specify these task settings by navigating to the Manage Financial Project Settings page and then clicking Planning> Edit in the Project Plan Type section> Task Settings.

Use Task Planned Dates as Task Assignment Dates

When you select this option, task assignments last for the entire task duration. Let's say the project manager set the task duration from January 1 through May 31, and the task assignment is from February 1 through March 1. The task assignment now runs from January 1 until May 31.

If you don't select this option, the project manager can set the task assignment dates in the project and edit individual task dates.

Automatically Roll Up Task Planned Dates

When you select this check box on the Edit Project Plan Type page, task dates automatically roll up to project dates on the financial plan. On the Manage Financial Project Plan page, the project manager can edit the planned dates for the lowest level tasks. Planned dates at the summary and project levels are the earliest start date and last end date of the tasks.

To sync dates across the work plan and the financial project plan, perform any one of the following actions:

Select the Define Common Financial Task Dates Across Work and Financial Planning check box. To select this check box, navigate to the Setup and Maintenance work area and search for the Manage Project Management Implementation Options task.
Run the Update Financial Project Plan and Progress action on the Manage Project Plan page if the Define Common Financial Task Dates Across Work and Financial Planning check box isn’t selected.

When the Define Common Financial Task Dates Across Work and Financial Planning check box isn’t selected and the Automatically roll up task planned dates check box is selected, you can plan task dates outside of the project dates and run the Update Financial Project Plan and Progress action on the Manage Project Plan page to sync the dates on the financial plan.

Suppose that the project manager creates a project with dates between 1/1/23 and 8/25/23. On the Manage Project Plan page, the project manager then updates the finish date of a financial task to 8/31/23, which is a later date than the project finish date, and runs the Update Financial Project Plan and Progress action. The application updates the finish date as follows:

Updates the planned finish date of the financial task to 8/31/23 and rolls up the project finish date as per the task finish date to 8/31/23 on the Manage Financial Project Plan page.
Displays 8/31/23 as the finish date of the project on the Manage Financial Project Settings page.

Synchronize Task Transaction Dates with Planned Dates

When you select this option, planned dates and task transaction dates are synchronized. The transaction dates always match task planned dates, plus or minus the number of days specified as a date adjustment buffer.

Buffer Value	What Does It Mean?
Positive	The number of days before or after the planned start or finish dates, respectively, that a transaction can be charged to a task.
Negative	The number of days after or before the planned start or finish dates, respectively, that a transaction can be charged to a task. Note: With negative buffer, the transaction dates are always within the range of planned dates.

If you don't synchronize the dates, the project manager can edit the project, summary, and lowest-level transaction dates in the project. This table lists the available options for each task level.

Task Levels	Dates To Use
Lowest-level	Summary level-task dates as default transaction dates
Subtasks	Dates are within the transaction dates for the summary task
Transaction	Within the project date range

You can modify the date synchronization option until you charge transactions to a task. Let's see the implications of changing between options.

Change	What Happens?
Deselected to selected	Existing transaction dates are replaced with dates calculated based on task planned dates plus or minus the date adjustment buffer.
Selected to deselected	Existing transaction dates become editable and dates outside the project dates are cleared. New transaction tasks have blank dates.