In looking at various clients who are using or trying to use workplan functionality in Oracle Project Management (PJT), I find that the most important issue people face (after they get all the suitable patches needed to get work plans to work correctly) is getting actuals to map into planned resources precisely. If this is not done correctly, based on the client’s needs, then what you get is a bunch of random actual assignments that increase the project cost on the work plan, as the planned amounts on the planned assignments do not get reduced correctly by the actuals. There are some essential points to remember when defining which planning resources you use to get actuals to map precisely to them.

1. All resources assigned to the workplan tasks have the following attributes on them:
   1. Resource Class
   2. Organization_ID (Expenditure Org)
   3. Default Expenditure Type
2. Now, if the resource formats you use do not include the organization or expenditure type on them, these values will default to each task assignment you make as follows:
   1. The Project/Task Organization defaults as the expenditure Organization unless it can derive from some other resource attribute, such as the named persons assigned organization or the designated organization from the Non-Labor Resource.
   2. The default expenditure type assigned to the resource class in the resource class setup defaults to the expenditure type on the assignment.
3. None of the other resources attributes default to the assignment unless they are a part of the resource definition (based on the resource format). This is done to allow Oracle to automatically compute the burden cost (from the raw cost calculated), which needs expenditure type. Org, these are the two main dimensions used in the setup of burden schedules.
4. The following issues can arise due to this defaulting:
   1. First, suppose the project/task organization is not set up as an expenditure organization. In that case, no actuals will ever map to the planning resources, as actuals always have a different expenditure organization.
   2. Suppose you have actuals coming in with different expenditure types for the same essential planned resource. In that case, only those actuals with the same expenditure type as the one that defaulted to the task assignment will map to the planned resource. All others will show up as unplanned actuals.
5. Finally, here are some rules to follow to get your actuals to always map to the planned resources as intended:
   1. If there is any possibility that the expenditure organization of actuals will be different from that of the project/task, include organization into your resource formats, making people plan by the correct org, and hence the actuals will map correctly
   2. Include Financial Category (Oracle speak for Expenditure type, Expenditure Category) into your resource formats. Now, if you don’t care about the burden cost on the work plan, then the suggestion will be to not set up a default Expenditure type on the resource class setup, and then it will not default to the task assignment and hence should not screw up your mapping.

That’s it for now, and remember:
There is no better way to manage a business than to Manage by Project.

PS: I welcome all comments/trackbacks/pingbacks/queries to my nascent venture here. I will try and respond to your comments, etc., in future entries.