Setting Up Resources in Microsoft Project 2010

Setting Up Cost Resources

Another type of resource that you can use in Project is the cost resource. You can use a cost resource to represent a financial cost associated with a task in a project. While work resources (people and equipment) can have associated costs (hourly rates and fixed costs per assignment), the sole purpose of a cost resource is to associate a particular type of cost with one or more tasks. Common types of cost resources might include categories of expenses you’d want to track on a project for accounting or financial reporting purposes, such as travel, entertainment, or training.

Cost resources do no work and have no effect on the scheduling of a task. The Max. Units Standard and Overtime pay rates and Cost/Use fields do not apply to cost resources. After you assign a cost resource to a task and specify the cost amount per task, you can then see the cumulative costs for that type of cost resource, such as total travel costs in a project.

The way in which cost resources generate cost values differs from that of work resources. When you assign a work resource to a task, the work resource can generate a cost based on a pay rate (such at $40 per hour for the length of the assignment), a flat per-use cost (such as $100 per assignment), or both. You set up such pay rates and cost per use amounts once for the work resource, as you did in the section “Entering Resource Pay Rates” earlier in this chapter. However, you enter the cost value of a cost resource only when you assign it to a task. You can do so in the Cost field of the Assign Resources dialog box or in the Cost field of the Task Form with the Cost detail shown.

Lucerne Publishing maintains a profit and loss (P&L) sheet for every book it publishes. Travel is a major expense incurred in a book launch.

In this exercise, you’ll set up a cost resource.

1. In the Resource Sheet, click the next empty cell in the Resource Name column.

2. Type Travel and press the Tab key.

3. In the Type field, click Cost.

   

You will assign a cost resource in Chapter 4.