Using control inquiries and reports

During the execution of a project, use the control inquiries and report sessions to monitor projects. You can make inquiries and print reports for project control purposes. Data is extracted from several other modules for control overviews. The project control inquiries and the project monitoring reports include the budget, budget adjustments, and budget extensions, combined with the costs, revenues, commitments, actual progress, and forecasts for final results. You can display and print control data on various levels, and view recorded data in a number of ways and at several levels.

All inquiries provide the following columns:

  • Budget
    The budgeted amount or budgeted quantities as shown in the control data.
  • Actual
    The actual costs or quantities recorded so far (posted to history). This may be for the current period, or for all periods up to the current one. In addition, this value can include or exclude commitments.
  • Performed
    The costs or quantities so far (earned value). The performed are calculated as follows: actual progress multiplied by the budget.
  • Result
    The difference between the actual costs and the performed (Cost Variance).

    You can view this data at the following levels:

Sort the overviews by:

LN provides several drill-down capabilities. For example, you can start an inquiry for all projects, perform a drill-down on one particular project to view a cost type, cost component, element, extension, or activity. You can further drill-down on, for example, one of the elements to view the cost type. Finally, you can drill-down to the actual inquiries of the control codes. All inquiries for the previously mentioned levels provide an overview of budget, actual costs, performed, and results.

Additional information is:

  • Revenues
    The revenues posted to the history for all periods up to the current one.
  • Forecast
    The additional revenues/costs/quantities forecast for the end of the project anticipated at the end of the current period.
  • Work in progress (wip)
    The way in which the work in progress is calculated depends on the setting of the WIP parameters in the Project Progress Parameters (tpppc0500m000) session:
    • Values including and excluding commitments
    • Cumulative and periodic values

Use the reports sessions to print the data displayed in the inquiries. For example, you can compare estimated budget costs against actual costs. You can print the hours, or cost figures at the cost object level.

Main features:

  • The level of detail is virtually unlimited, but depends on the definition of the project control levels.
  • You can drill down to the desired level of cost control.
  • Project control inquiries are available by a combination of project, element, activity, extension, cost type, cost object and cost component:
  • Within the control levels, you can present the results (the comparison of total budget, actual costs and performed, quantities and so on) as follows: including or excluding commitments; as quantities or amounts; in the current period or cumulatively; with or without the variance at completion.
  • You can view the history for the control code level.
  • A large number of reports are available for organizational planning requirements. For example, project control with references to purchase and warehouse orders and the status of these orders.