Forecasting monthly Task Values throughout a project

[Mike Mihalich]

We would like to create a report that would forecast monthly completed value of work throughout the duration of a project that is set up in a Gant Chart schedule using Microsoft Project Professional 2013.This will help us forecast monthly cash inflows for the duration of any given project. I am able to assign a value for each task in the schedule and would like to know the best location to place the value assigned (Fixed Costs, Baseline)? With values assigned to tasks that are shown on a weekly time line, we should somehow be able to see the total value of costs completed for every seperate month? Any incite as to how this could be set up would be appreciated.

[Sai Prasad]

Mike – To see the cash flow with cumulative work for every month, please follow the steps mentioned below
1. If you have resources with cost information (standard rate, overtime rate and cost/per use) with proper “Accrue At” in Resource Sheet, assign these resources to the tasks (or) you may want to enter the cost information in Gantt Chart in “Fixed Cost” with proper “Fixed Cost Accrue At”. “Accrue At” value will have the impact on when the cost are to be charged to the cost of the task
2. Baseline the plan. Click Project, Set Baseline, Set Baseline … Choose Baseline in the first dropdown, and choose “Entire Project”, and save the baseline. This action will copy the estimated work, cost, start, finish, duration to the baseline fields in the same file.
3. Now you can see the cash flow with cumulative work for every month with one of the following options
a. Change View to Task Usage (View ribbon). Check Project Summary Task in Format ribbon (this will display row 0). Follow the steps in this picture to bring the cumulative work and cost – https://i.imgur.com/F07OZ9b.png
b. In Project 2013 and 2016, you can click Reports, Cash Flow to view the cash flow

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