Rates appear to be incorrect on a project
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Rates appear to be incorrect on a project

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Article ID: 10748

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Updated On:

Products

Clarity PPM On Premise Clarity PPM SaaS

Issue/Introduction

Time entered on projects are entered either from timesheets, manual transactions, and XOG.

Time actuals/units have to be associated with a rate in order to calculate actual cost, which is displayed in portlets or reports.

The rates appear to be incorrect when reviewed and raise several questions:

  1. What are the proper steps to ensure the correct rate is associated with the project?
  2. What if the incorrect rate has already posted?

Environment

Release: All

Cause

Clarity provides historic, live, and snapshot rates.

  • The historic rate can be derived from PPA_WIP/PPA_WIP_VALUE tables, i.e. all the posting jobs (Post Timesheets, Post Transactions to Financials, Post to WIP) will need to be ran.
  • The live rates are in PPA_MATRIX/PPA_MATRIX_VALUES. The cost plan planned cost gets the rate from these tables.
  • The snapshot rates are obtained from the NBI_PROJ_RES_RATES_AND_COSTS table.

This is why it is extremely important that the full Rate Matrix Extraction (RME) job runs and completes prior to the Post Timesheets job. When the Post Timesheets job is ran to post the actuals from timesheets, the rates are not obtained from PPA_MATRIX/PPA_MATRIX_VALUES. It is instead retrieved from the NBI_PROJ_RES_RATES_AND_COSTS, which is updated when the full Rate Matrix Extraction job is ran.

Resolution

Actuals are viewed from a planned(actuals/cost) versus realized(WIP actuals/cost).

  1. What steps are needed to ensure the correct rate is associated with the project?
    • Create a rate matrix.
    • Associate the rate matrix to a project for each labor type.

      When the entity-level matrix, no matrix, or incorrect matrix is associated with an investment, it will yield unexpected rates and costs. Make sure the correct rate matrix is used.
  2. View the planned and actual costs by creating a cost plan from either (Team Allocation/Investment Team or Task Assignments)

    The rates are obtained directly from the live matrix in Administration > Finance > Manage Matrix (PPA_MATRIX)
    • For planned actuals/cost, use the Project > Financial Plans > Cost Plan > Populate the detailed cost plan from Team Allocation/Investment Team
    • For realized(WIP actuals/cost), use Project > Financial Plans > Cost Plan > Populate the detailed cost plan from Task Assignments

      Both methods will always show the planned units and cost and actual units and cost from WIP from matching grouping attributes.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q. How can the financially-posted transactions be viewed to reveal the rates and costs?

Use the Home > Financial Management > Posted Transactions Review portlet for viewing the realized/posted rates and actual costs.

Again, it is critical that the following jobs be run in the following sequential order:

  1. Rate Matrix Extraction(full)
  2. Post Timesheets
  3. Post Transactions to Financials
  4. Post to WIP

Q. What if the incorrect rate has already been posted?

  1. To adjust a timesheet, the timesheet needs to be changed in order for the Post Timesheets job to process the adjustment.
  2. To adjust a manual transaction, create and approve the WIP adjustment
    1. Go to Home > Financial Management > Create WIP Adjustment
      1. Set 'Quantity' to be the desired number of hours (never a negative quantity)
      2. Set 'Cost' to be the desired actual cost rate (never a negative rate)
      3. Checkmark 'Calculate New Rates'
    2. Approve the adjustment via Home > Financial Management > Approve WIP Adjustment

Q. What if we have questions on how to properly adjust/correct a timesheet transaction?

  1. If there is a synchronization issue with the project actual cost vs the WIP actual cost, there is no way to fix the discrepancy as Clarity will use the rate supplied at the time the Post Timesheets job runs.
  2. There is no way to fix past timesheet transactions in regards to the Actual Cost.
    • It is recommended to use review the accuracy of a timesheet transaction via the Home > Financial Management > Posted Transactions Review portlet. This portlet will show the actual hours and actual cost associated.
  3. Therefore by design, there is no way to rectify the past timesheet transactions, as WIP adjustments require that the Import Financial Actuals job be run, which adds the change(delta) cost back to the project assignment, causing further confusion to users.
  4. So in summary, the Actual Cost discrepancies are caused when there was a rate change and the Post Timesheets job was run before the Rate Matrix Extraction job. By design, it will pick up the associated rate. Always make sure that when a rate is updated/added to the rate matrix, the full Rate Matrix Extraction job needs to be run before running the Post Timesheets job processes the timesheet.
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