Project 2010 Bible

Chapter 13. Recording Actuals

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Organizing the updating process options

• Understanding calculation options

• Setting the project status date

• Updating tasks to reflect actual information

• Actuals and costs

• Techniques and tips for updating

Actuals represent what has, in fact, occurred during your project. In Microsoft Project, you can record actual information about the cost of a task and about the time spent completing the task. By recording actual information, you accomplish the following things:

• For automatically scheduled tasks, you let Project automatically reschedule the remainder of your project.

• You provide management with a way to measure how well your project is going.

• You provide yourself with valuable information on your estimating skills — information that you can apply to the remainder of the current project and to your next project.

You also can record progress for manually scheduled tasks, and you find information in this chapter on the process. Because you control the behavior of manually scheduled tasks and Project controls the behavior of automatically scheduled tasks, Project behaves just a little differently when you record progress for manually scheduled tasks.

Organizing the Updating Process

Before you launch into the mechanics of updating a project, you should take a moment to examine the updating process. Updating a project can become complicated, particularly for large projects with many resources assigned to them. You need to establish efficient manual procedures ...