Activity overview

An activity is a phase, task, operation, or other component within an activity group. Activities provide a framework for establishing and collecting budgets, costs, revenues, and statistical information. You can structure activities to meet your specific information and reporting needs.

The activity group determines the number of levels you can have in an activity structure. For example, an activity structure created to track an organization's projects may contain three levels: project, phase, and task. Budgets, costs, revenues, and units for tasks roll up into phases, which in turn roll up to projects.

You can define three types of activities:

Posting	These are activities at the lowest level in the structure. Activity transactions must contain a posting activity and an account category. Costs, revenues, and units from transactions are consolidated into balances in posting level activities. If you use activity budgets, you must create them in posting activities.
Summary	These are activities at higher levels in the structure. Budgets, costs, revenues, and units from posting activities are consolidated, or rolled up, into balances in the higher-level summary activities.
Contract	These are activities used in the Lawson Billing and Revenue Management application. Contract activities follow the same rules as summary activities. In addition, contract activities provide a framework for storing contract and billing information. For more about contract activities, see the Billing and Revenue Management User Guide