Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual

Defining Costs for Resources

Unless money is no object (yeah, right), you need to keep a close eye on project costs. Labor and materials usually represent the bulk of the cost for a project. When you assign costs to work and material resources, Project calculates project costs as well as the schedule. The cost fields are available in both the Resource Sheet and the Resource Information dialog box, but the Resource Sheet is usually the quickest option. This section describes how to enter costs for all three types of resources.

Setting Up Work and Material Costs

Work and material resources use the same cost fields, although they don’t always represent the same thing. The rate for a work resource is the cost per period of time, whereas a rate for materials is the cost per unit. Here are the cost fields for resources and what they do:

• Std. Rate (Standard Rate) is the typical pay rate for a work resource, the cost per time period for a piece of equipment, or the cost per unit for material. For example, a contractor’s pay rate of $50 per hour shows up as $50.00/hr. Because work resources are assigned by time, Project automatically adds “/hr” to the number you type. If you pay a contractor a flat rate per month, you can use a different unit of time, for instance, “$5000/mon.”

  Tip

  Project includes options for setting the standard rate and overtime rate (discussed in a sec) for resources. Initially, these options are set to $0.00/hr ($0 per hour). However, if most of your resources cost the same ...