Oracle Projects

Peoject is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.
Temporary - Projects, unlike operations, have a definite beginning and end, with a defined budget, timeframe, and scope.
Unique -      Every project is different, even if it’s for a similar product, service, or result. Performed by cross-functional project teams, people who are brought together from various groups specifically for that effort  Projects are constrained by limited resources and must be planned, executed, and controlled.
            
Oracle Projects
The purpose of oracle project is to track and control work (activity) on a project.

• You track activity on a project by comparing actual activity with expected activity.
• Record actual activity as actuals (transactions).
• Record expected activity in a budget.

• Create a Project
• Enter the Budget
• Costing : Expenditure, Allocation, Burdening and Capitalization
• Billing : Agreement and Funding -- for Contractual projects , Revenue, Invoice Transactions
• Perform Analysis Reporting

• SOB/Ledger with GL
• Organizations, Job and Employees with HRMS
• Customers with OM

Resources

Resources are the labor, services, materials, equipment, and other items needed to plan, track, complete, and account for project work. In Oracle Projects, you can define and utilize resources to:

• Plan work
• Staff projects
• Estimate budgets and forecasts
• Assign tasks, issues, and change requests
• Track and report project costs and categorize revenue
• Schedule assignments and monitor the project progress
• Charge labor and expenses to a project containing employees and contingent workers

1. Overview of Resources
2. Planning Resource Lists
3. Resource Breakdown Structure

• Employees: persons employed by the deploying enterprise
• Contingent workers: persons contracted by the deploying enterprise
• External team members: person contacts or employees of a customer or a partner organization.

•  Business group definition, including the specification of the Project Burdening Hierarchy
• Job definitions
•  Organization, organization hierarchies and organization types and definitions
•  Entry and inquiry of employees and employee assignments, including date-effective assignments over time and specification of supervisors and billing titles (used in Oracle Projects) on the employee assignments

More on Resources

Resource Types
In addition to people resources, you can use other types of resources to complete a project. The following table lists the types of resources that Oracle Projects supports, their descriptions, and where they are defined:

• Resource List: You can select any active resource list
• Use: Oracle Projects tracks if the resource list is used for a given budget type or for status reporting. You can only select Status Reporting when you enter a new resource list assignment.
• Drilldown Default: You use this check box to specify the default resource list to use when you drill down to view the resource status in the Project Status window. If necessary, you can change the resource list that you use for reviewing resource status in the Project Status Inquiry form; the change is effective only for the current session.

 

Project Team Definition

In this chapter we 'll discusses the functionality behind project team definition, including the definition of scheduled and nonscheduled team members and the definition of organization roles, and the definition and management of scheduled team roles.

Processing Pre-Approved Expenditures

1. Expense Report
2. Usage logs
   
3. Timecards
4. Burden transactions
5. Inventory transactions
6. Work in process transactions
7. Miscellaneous transactions

• Working The expenditure batch is not ready for review. You can enter timecards, usages, miscellaneous transactions, burden transactions, inventory transactions, or work-in-process transactions and modify their expenditures and expenditure items.
• Submitted The batch is awaiting review. You can still retrieve the batch if you need to make corrections.
• Released The expenditure batch has been released for cost distribution. You can reverse incorrectly entered expenditure items within the batch.

Organizations

Oracle Projects shares organization, job, and employee information with Oracle Human Resources. If your business does not currently use Oracle Human Resources, you define this data using the Oracle Human Resources windows provided with Oracle Projects.
Your implementation of Oracle Human Resources to work with Oracle Projects involves the definition of:

• Organizations and organization hierarchies
• Jobs
• Resource information

• Project/Task Owning Organization  can own projects and/or tasks in the operating unit. To own projects and tasks in an operating unit, an organization must have the following characteristics:
  • The Project/Task Owning Organization Classification must be enabled.
  • The organization must belong to the Project/Task Owning Organization Hierarchy Branch assigned to the operating unit.

• Project Expenditure/Event Organization can own project events, incur expenditures, and hold budgets for projects in the processing operating unit, unless they are overridden by projects or tasks using organization overrides. To have these
  capabilities in the operating unit, an organizationmust have the following characteristics:
  • The Project Expenditure/Event Organization classification must be enabled.
  • The organization must belong to the Expenditure/Event Organization Hierarchy Branch assigned to the operating unit.

• Project Invoice Collection Organization
• Project Manufacturing Organization

• Oracle Projects lets you assign burden multipliers to organizations in the Project Burdening Hierarchy Version. You can only assign burden cost code multipliers to organizations that are in the Project Burdening Hierarchy Version.
• Oracle Projects uses the Project Burdening Hierarchy Version associated with the burden schedule to calculate burdened cost. If Oracle Projects does not find the expenditure organizations in the Project Burdening Hierarchy Version duringburden processing, the expenditure item is not burdened, and the burdened cost is equal to the raw cost.

• The organization has the Project Invoice Collection Organization classification enabled.
• The organization belongs to the Project/Task Owning Organization Hierarchy Branch assigned to the operating unit. Oracle Projects uses the default transaction type if it cannot find a rollup project invoice collection organization for the invoice.

Operating Units and Multiple Organizations

Operating units are another type of organization classification. You use operating units to partition data for a subledger application such as Oracle Payables, Oracle Receivables, or Oracle General Ledger. When an enterprise utilizes more than one operating unit, it is said to have a "multiple organization installation."
The implementation of multiple organizations in Oracle Projects supports multinational enterprises and enterprises with complex organizational structures.

A multiple organization installation enables you to:

• Ensure secure data access for each operating unit.
• Integrate with other Oracle Applications that support multi-organization processing .

•  A single operating unit (the project operating unit) owns each project and project template.
•  Project numbers and project template numbers are unique across all operating units in a single installation.
•  Customers are shared across operating units, while customer sites are associated with a specific operating unit.
•  Individual operating units own customer agreements.

• You can charge, transfer, or allocate expenditures to any project as long as the expenditure operating unit and project operating unit is eligible for cross-charging.
• Costs are entered and processed in the same expenditure operating unit.
• You enter expenditures in the expenditure operating unit in Oracle Projects (timecards, expense reports and non-labor resource usage), AP (supplier invoices) or PO (requisitions and purchase orders).
• The system calculates costs in the expenditure operating unit using cost rates that have been set up for that operating unit. The system burdens costs based on the project burden schedule.
• The system generates accounting transactions in the expenditure operating unit using the operating unit’s AutoAccounting or Account Generator process.
• The system transfers supplier invoices for a project from the expenditure operating unit in Oracle Payables to the same operating unit in Oracle Projects.
• The system transfers labor cost from the expenditure operating unit in Oracle Projects to the Oracle General Ledger set of books associated with the operating unit.
• The system transfers Oracle Projects expense reports from the expenditure operating unit in Oracle Projects to the same operating unit in Oracle Payables. If the expense report is entered as an invoice in Oracle Payables, it is interfaced from the expenditure operating unit in Oracle Payables to the same operating unit in Oracle Projects.

• You can view the Expenditure Items window in either project or cross-project mode:
• In project mode, the window displays expenditures for a project in the project operating unit.
• In cross-project mode, the window displays expenditures incurred in the expenditure operating unit.

• The project operating unit processes revenue and invoices against transactions from any expenditure operating units.
• The project operating unit calculates draft revenue and draft invoices using its bill rates, the project billing rate overrides, or the project labor multipliers.
• The expenditure operating unit must process project costs charged across operating units before the project operating unit can process them as project
• revenue and invoices.
• Note: The Project Streamline Process calculates costs for expenditure items incurred in the project operating unit only.
• The project operating unit uses its AutoAccounting process to generate accounting transactions for project billing.
• The project operating unit also uses its AutoAccounting process to transfer revenue to Oracle General Ledger and transfer invoices to Oracle Receivables.

• Transfers and splits generate transactions in the same operating unit as the original transaction, although the transfer may be to any chargeable project.
• The project operating unit submits reports that can be printed for a single project or a range of projects on project-related transactions across expenditure operating units.
• The project operating unit submits and stores project summary amounts. Project Status Inquiry performs queries on projects within the project operating unit.
• Reports for employees or organizations list all transactions entered within the operating unit from which the report is submitted.
• Each asset is capitalized from a single capital project to an Oracle Assets corporate book that is associated with the project operating unit’s set of books.

Defining Organization Hierarchies

• A Project/Task Owning Organization hierarchy version is assigned to each operating unit.
• An Expenditure/Event Organization hierarchy version is assigned to each operating unit.
• A Default Reporting Organization Hierarchy Version is assigned to each operating unit. The hierarchy version can be overridden at reporting time.
• A Project Burdening Hierarchy Version is assigned to each business group.

Resource Breakdown Structure

Resource breakdown structures provide another method of viewing planned and actual costs and revenue of a project by resources, resource types, and other groupings of resources. The resource breakdown structure consists of one or more hierarchies of resource elements. An element is a resource type, such as job or organization, or a combination of a resource type and a specified resource, such as the job of Staffing Consultants or a person named John Smith.

In addition to all of the resource types described above, you can also use another resource type called Role exclusively in a resource breakdown structure. A role is an actual, assigned resource, such as a developer or a project manager.

Example
The following table demonstrates a resource breakdown structure:

Project Teams and Team Roles

A team is a collection of roles on a project. You can divide the people on a team into two categories: scheduled members and nonscheduled members.

Scheduled team members are those people for whom you want to track the hours, utilization, and financial impact (costs, revenue, and margin). Your scheduled team members for a project can also be referred to as the delivery team. Nonscheduled team members of a project comprise the extended team and include project team members whose time is not specifically tracked.

Subteams enable you to classify your people on your project into logical groups. For example, you may have resources on a project that you can group into consultants, administrative staff, and engineers, or, you may have people grouped into
subteams for different phases of a project.

For a project, you can enter general staffing information such as the default calendar, role list, initial team template, and advertisement rules. The role list controls access for the roles that you can add to your project. The initial team
template indicates the name of the team template that was used to create requirements on the project upon initial project creation.

The advertisement rule controls the visibility of requirements both inside and outside of the organization. Oracle Projects comes seeded with a project manager role, and requires that you designate one project team member as a project manager. While you can have only one project manager at any point in time, you can change the project manager role
assignment as necessary.

Note: Approved contract projects must have a project manager for the duration of the project. A project manager is not required for indirect projects or capital projects.

You can also define people as team members in order to facilitate distribution of Projects reports to responsible parties

Project/Team Roles
A project role is a collection of default information about a team member assigned to a project, such as competencies, job information, and security. You create project roles to represent the typical team member roles needed for projects within your organization.
Examples of project roles include project manager, project administrator, database administrator, and consultant. Each role can have a different set of competencies, job information for forecasting and menu to control security access to projects.

• Adding a Requirement: When you define a requirement for a scheduled resource, you also create and define a team role based on a project role. You can then create a project assignment for the requirement once you find a person resource that is appropriate for it.Adding a requirement is also the first step in the "top-down" staffing method, which you can use in conjunction with Oracle Project Management. With top-down staffing, you can create a set of project roles, and then have the system generate a planning resource.
• Creating a Team Role from a Planning Resource List: You can generate team roles based on resource assignments that utilize a planning resource list. This is part of the "bottom-up" staffing method, which you can use in conjunction with Oracle Project Management. With bottom-up staffing, you assign planning resources to tasks in your project and then generate project team roles for those resource assignments.

Basics of project

Before you can execute a project you need to break down the work into tasks that help you define job level requirements for the project and map resource competencies. To efficiently manage the work you must be able to plan, track, and report effort, cost, and revenue. You can do this if you have:

• a list of possible resources that you can assign to the project.
• defined rates for jobs, people resources and materials.
• identified roles for project access and collaboration.

Set up

Before you can execute a project you need to break down the work into tasks that help you define job level requirements for the project and map resource competencies. To efficiently manage the work you must be able to plan, track, and report effort, cost, and revenue. You can do this if you have:

• a list of possible resources that you can assign to the project.
• defined rates for jobs, people resources and materials.
• identified roles for project access and collaboration.

Expenditures

Before you can execute a project you need to break down the work into tasks that help you define job level requirements for the project and map resource competencies. To efficiently manage the work you must be able to plan, track, and report effort, cost, and revenue. You can do this if you have:

• a list of possible resources that you can assign to the project.
• defined rates for jobs, people resources and materials.
• identified roles for project access and collaboration.

Basics of project

Before you can execute a project you need to break down the work into tasks that help you define job level requirements for the project and map resource competencies. To efficiently manage the work you must be able to plan, track, and report effort, cost, and revenue. You can do this if you have:

• a list of possible resources that you can assign to the project.
• defined rates for jobs, people resources and materials.
• identified roles for project access and collaboration.

Set up

Before you can execute a project you need to break down the work into tasks that help you define job level requirements for the project and map resource competencies. To efficiently manage the work you must be able to plan, track, and report effort, cost, and revenue. You can do this if you have:

• a list of possible resources that you can assign to the project.
• defined rates for jobs, people resources and materials.
• identified roles for project access and collaboration.

Expenditures

Before you can execute a project you need to break down the work into tasks that help you define job level requirements for the project and map resource competencies. To efficiently manage the work you must be able to plan, track, and report effort, cost, and revenue. You can do this if you have:

• a list of possible resources that you can assign to the project.
• defined rates for jobs, people resources and materials.
• identified roles for project access and collaboration.

Basics of project

Before you can execute a project you need to break down the work into tasks that help you define job level requirements for the project and map resource competencies. To efficiently manage the work you must be able to plan, track, and report effort, cost, and revenue. You can do this if you have:

• a list of possible resources that you can assign to the project.
• defined rates for jobs, people resources and materials.
• identified roles for project access and collaboration.

Set up

Before you can execute a project you need to break down the work into tasks that help you define job level requirements for the project and map resource competencies. To efficiently manage the work you must be able to plan, track, and report effort, cost, and revenue. You can do this if you have:

• a list of possible resources that you can assign to the project.
• defined rates for jobs, people resources and materials.
• identified roles for project access and collaboration.

Expenditures

Before you can execute a project you need to break down the work into tasks that help you define job level requirements for the project and map resource competencies. To efficiently manage the work you must be able to plan, track, and report effort, cost, and revenue. You can do this if you have:

• a list of possible resources that you can assign to the project.
• defined rates for jobs, people resources and materials.
• identified roles for project access and collaboration.

Rate Schedule

You can use rates to calculate amounts for costing, billing, and workplan and financial planning. Oracle Projects determines rates from a combination of rate schedules and rate overrides. You can define the following four types of rate schedules in Oracle Projects:

• Employee: Use this type of rate schedule to define standard hourly rates or percentage markups by employee. You can use employee rate schedules as planning schedules, cost rate schedules, and bill rate schedules.
• Job: Use this type of rate schedule to define standard hourly rates by job title. When you enter a job-based rate schedule, you enter a job group to indicate which jobs are used to determine rates. You can use job schedules as planning rate schedules, cost rate schedules, and bill rate schedules.
  
• Resource Class : Use this type of rate schedule to define planning rates by resource class, or as a combination of resource class and organization.
• Nonlabor: Use this type of rate schedule to define rates or percentage markups by nonlabor expenditure type or a combination of nonlabor expenditure type and nonlabor resource. You can use nonlabor rate schedules as planning rate schedules, cost rate schedules, and bill rate schedules.
   

Resource lists

Resource lists are groupings of resources. You attach resource lists to projects to effectively budget project cost and revenue, to track resource usage, and to view cross-project reporting. Oracle Projects summarizes actual costs and commitments for resources, and rolls up the amounts for a project based on the attached resource list.

Planning Resource Lists

You use planning resource lists to plan the cost and effort of a project. You can define the resource needs at a high level, such as indicating that you need an organization or supplier involved in the project. You can also define your resource needs in a more granular form such as specifying a particular team role, a particular person, or even a specific financial element.

Defining a planning resource list
You use planning resource lists for project, task assignment, and financial planning.

• A single identified resource such as a named person (Amy Marlin), or a specific piece of equipment or nonlabor resource such as a laptop
• A combination of an identified resource with specific attributes (Amy Marlin of Consulting East)
• A combination of resource-related attributes such as a team role in a specific organization (Architect - US East Coast Region or DBA - Chicago HQ) or a specific expense of a financial category (Airfare - Employee Expenses)
•  

Project Manager

You must define a project manager for each project. The project manager is responsible for the overall successful execution and completion of a project.

Create a requirement

• People
• Equipment
• Material Items
• Financial Elements
•  

Setting Up Project Costing

PA: Allow Override of PA Distribution in AP/PO
This profile option determines whether Oracle Purchasing and Oracle Payables pass user-entered account segment values to the Account Generator workflow.

PA: Default Expenditure Item Date for Supplier Cost
This profile option enables you to specify the source for the expenditure item date. Oracle Payables uses this profile option during the invoice match process, and when you enter unmatched invoices, to determine the default expenditure item date for supplier invoice distribution lines.

Creating and Updating Workplans

You use a workplan to organize the tasks that you use to define, plan, and track all of the work in a project. The workplan is a hierarchy. You can define task details such as schedule, task manager, and priority. You can also assign resources to a task and create team roles for assigned resources.

Define task details

Use task details to define basic task information such as task name, task type, task manager, priority, and schedule.


Create resource assignments
Define resource assignment details
Create team roles

Capital Projects

You use capital projects to capture the costs of capital assets you are building, installing, or acquiring. You also use capital projects to capture the costs of removing, abandoning, or disposing of assets you want to retire. You can set up capital projects to capture capital asset costs only, retirement costs only, or to capture both capital asset costs and retirement costs.

Define standard unit cost for asset book


You can set up a capital project to automatically allocate unassigned and common costs to multiple assets by selecting an asset cost allocation method for the project. If you select the Standard Unit Cost method of allocating asset costs, then you must first define a standard unit cost for a selected asset category and asset book. The asset category defines the cost account and depreciation rules for the asset whereas the asset book defines the corporate depreciation book of the asset. After you interface asset costs, Oracle Assets determines default financial information from the asset category, book, and placed-in-service date for your asset.

Project Workplan

A workplan (structure) contains a hierarchical organization of tasks within a  project. Each workplan contains an unlimited number of tasks and you can define as many levels as you want. Workplan structures helps project managers and team members deliver projects on time.

Financial structures help project and financial administrations track financial information for a project.

Enable Workplan Structures for a project and optionally share it with financial structures.

The most important usage of workplan is to cerate the tasks and deliverables. With these two tabs there are other two tabs in workplan - resource usage and setup.

Workplan Versioning
Allows you to create multiple versions of workplans.

Statuses: Working, Submitted, Approved, Rejected, Published .

Workplan Publishing:

• If you have not set an approver, it gets published automatically
• Submitted to approver if you have set an approver
• When the approver approves, it goes to Approved status, after which you can publish
• Auto-publish after approval, if option is enabled
• Notification to team members upon workplan publish
  

Project Definition and Information

A project is a primary unit of work that you can break down into one or more tasks. You charge the transactions you enter in Oracle Projects to a project and a task. When you set up a project, you must set up a project structure, and enter project and task information.

This section explains how to use Oracle Projects to organize your project setup to meet your business needs.

Project Classes
You can use three predefined project classes to track the following types of information

Overview of Projects and Tasks

Project Structures
A structure in Oracle Projects is a hierarchical arrangement of tasks for use by a project. You can set up different structures in a project for different business purposes.

A project structure is often referred to as a work breakdown structure or WBS. You organize your project work into smaller, more easily manageable units called tasks. In each project structure, you can define an unlimited number of tasks, and as many levels of tasks as you want. You can number and name the tasks as you wish.

Task Position
Oracle Projects processes tasks based on their position in the structure. The three distinct positions are:

Top Task: A task whose parent is the project
Mid Task: A task that is not a top task or a lowest task
Lowest Task: A task that is at the bottom of the structure, without any child tasks

Financial Structures

You can set up a financial structure for a project that is separate from the workplan structure. The project then has different levels of control for cost estimated budgeting and revenue budgeting.

When you create a project from a project template or an existing project, Oracle Projects copies the financial structure from the source project or template. When you create a project template, Oracle Project automatically creates one default task for the financial structure. You may want to alter this structure by creating a new top task to begin a new branch of the work breakdown structure, or by creating additional subtasks under an existing task.

• Transactions charged to it
• Budget amounts (and the task is not a top task)
• Transaction controls
• Burden schedule overrides
• Any billing overrides (for contract projects)
• Asset assignments (and the task is not a top task) (for capital projects)

• Allow Charges
• Cost Burden Schedule
• Capitalizable
• Billable
• Billing Schedules and Discounts
• Transaction Dates

Workplan Structures

The workplan structure organizes the tasks that define all of the work in a project. The schedule and progress information and the task manager assignments are typically assigned at the task level.

The workplan of a project consists of the workplan structure and the following functionality:

Workplan Versioning: You can create multiple versions of the workplan. This enables what–if analysis for project managers and a historical archive of changes to the workplan.
Examples of changes that a workplan structure can undergo are:
– Addition of a task due to scope change
– Change in dates for schedule slipping analysis

Workplan Approval and Publication: You can submit a workplan for approval for change control purposes. Once approved, or if approval is not necessary, you can publish the
Workplan. Publishing the workplan communicates new tasks, dates and changes that affect the schedule of the workplan.

Baselining: You can designate a version of the Workplan as the baseline version.

Third Party Project Tool Integration: You can integrate with third–party project tools. When you integrate with another project tool, you can send and receive tasks, progress, budgets, resources and other project information.


To enable the workplan structure for a project
To define a workplan structure, you must first enable the workplan structure for the project.

•  Critical
•  Milestone
•  Priority
•  Work Quantity
•  Planned Effort
•  Phase
•  Schedule Dates

Project Lifecycles

A lifecycle is a collection of sequential project phases. Each phase represents a collection of logically related project activities.
You can use a lifecycle in Oracle Projects to track the progression of a project through the lifecycle phases, and to provide visibility of this progress. You can associate the work breakdown structure in a project or project template with a lifecycle.

You can assign the phases in the lifecycle to the top tasks in the work breakdown structure. As the project progresses through the phases, the project manager can update the project to indicate the current phase for the project.
Oracle Projects is integrated with Oracle Advanced Product Catalog, to address the enterprise project management and execution needs for the product lifecycle management (PLM) solution. Lifecycles can be associated with catalog categories, items, and item revisions. Items and revisions can then optionally be supported by a lifecycle tracking project, which is used to drive the product through the lifecycle, and provides metrics such as project progress status through each lifecycle phase.

Assigning Lifecycle Phases to Tasks
You can assign a lifecycle phase to a top task. The following rules apply to assigning lifecycle phases to tasks:

1. You must associate a lifecycle with your workplan before you can assign lifecycle phases to the top tasks in the workplan.
2. If your workplan is associated with a lifecycle, you must assign lifecycle phases to each of the top tasks in the workplan. You can only assign phases to tasks that are top tasks in all versions of the workplan.
3. Each phase can be assigned to only one top task.
4. Once a top task has a lifecycle phase assigned to it, you cannot move it below the top task level, whether through moving, copying, or indenting. You can change the sequence of top tasks with assigned phases, however.
5. If you change the lifecycle for a project workplan or project template, the system removes all existing phase assignments to top tasks.

Project and Task Attributes

You can enter attributes for projects and tasks that record information essential to the project and control how the system processes costing, billing, resources, and reporting.

Oracle Projects delivers all of the basic attributes you need to manage your projects and tasks. Your implementation team can also create additional attributes that enable you to enter and maintain project and task information that is unique to your organization.

Project Basic Information

Name
A short, unique, descriptive name of a project. Use this name to find and identify a project throughout Oracle Projects.

Long Name
A longer, unique descriptive name for the project. Can be up to 240 characters long. The default value is the short name (Name).

Number
Unique identification number of a project. You use this number to find and identify the project throughout Oracle Projects.
You can manually enter a project number, or let the system automatically generate one for you. The project numbering method you set up in the Implementation Options form determines how to create the number.
For audit trail purposes, you cannot modify a project number after you charge expenditure items, requisitions, purchase orders, or supplier invoices to the project.
Note: Unlike projects, project templates are always numbered manually. The Project Numbering implementation option, which determines whether projects are numbered automatically or manually, does not affect numbering of project templates.

Project Organization
The managing (”owning”) organization of a project. Use the organization for reporting and AutoAccounting purposes. You can choose any organization that has the following characteristics:

• The organization belongs to the project/task organization hierarchy assigned to the operating unit.
• The organization has the project/task owning organization classification enabled.
• The project type class is permitted to use the organization to create projects. This permission is determined when you define the organization.
• The organization is active as of the system date.

For audit trail purposes, there are controls over modification of the project or task owning organization.
When you attempt to change the organization on a project or task, the Verify Organization Change Extension is called to determine whether the change is allowed.
You can override the default logic in the extension in one of the following ways:

• Have your System Administrator assign the function Projects: Org Update: Override Standard Checks to your responsibility.
• Modify the logic in the Verify Organization Change extension.

If the change is allowed, Oracle Projects displays a dialog box when you save or exit the record. The dialog box asks if you want to mark existing expenditure items on the project that are dated after the date of the change for recalculation. Expenditure items dated prior to the change are not marked for recalculation.

Project Type
The project type determines how Oracle Projects processes costs (expenditure items) for a project and provides defaults and controls for project entry and processing. You must associate each project type with a project type class:

Use the Indirect project type class to collect and track expenditure item costs and labor hours for overhead activities, such as administrative and overhead work, marketing, and bid & proposal preparation. You can also define indirect projects to track time off including sick leave, vacation, and holidays

Use a Capital project type class to collect and track costs and labor hours for asset development activities that you plan to capitalize as one or more assets.

Use a Contract project type class to collect and track costs, labor hours, revenue, and billing for services performed for and reimbursed by a client.
Note: Only Oracle Project Billing supports contract projects. For audit trail purposes, you cannot change a project type after you create customer invoices for the project, or charge expenditure items, requisitions, purchase orders, or supplier invoices to the project

Status
Indicates the current status of a project.
Oracle Projects provides several predefined project statuses. You can define additional project statuses in the Status window. Status Controls for each project status allow you to set up permissions or restrictions on actions for each project status.
Next Allowable Statuses allow you to control which statuses are permitted as the new status when a project’s status is changed manually. For example, you can control whether new transactions can be charged to a project with a certain project status. The same is true for revenue accrual and invoicing.
Change Status
To change the status of a project, you choose Change Status. When you enter a status change for a project, Oracle Projects uses the following rules to determine if the status change is allowed:

• The project must have class codes entered for all required class categories.
• If the project is a contract project, the project must have at least one customer, and the total billing contribution must equal 100%.
• Each project customer for the project must have at least one billing contact defined.
• The project must have a project manager assigned to it.
• The new status must be an allowable next status

Project Start and Finish Dates
Oracle Projects uses start and finish dates to control processing, indicate estimated and scheduled duration, and serve as tools to evaluate project performance.
The start and finish dates at the project level are:
Actual: Actual dates when work on the project started and finished. You can use these dates to drive future timecard and
earned value functionality.
Scheduled: Scheduled start and finish dates for the project.
Target: The expected lifespan of the project.
Estimated: A task manager’s estimate of when work on the project will be started and finished.
Baseline: The baselined schedule
Transaction: The transaction start date and finish date control which transactions can be charged the project

Project Classifications
When specifying project classifications, you choose the class category for your project, then select one or more class codes for the class category. For example, you can specify a class category of Funding Source, and assign a class code of Federal to indicate project funding by a federal agency. You define class categories and codes when you set up project classifications.
You can specify classifications at the project level only.

Work Types

You define work types to represent a classification of work. You use work types to classify both actual and scheduled work. For example, a professional services enterprise could define the following work types:

1. Analysis
2. Design
3. External Training
4. Implementation
5. Non-Worked Time
6. Support

You can use work types to classify work for the following purposes:

• Determining the billability of expenditure items
• Classifying cross charge amounts into cost and revenue for cross-charged work
• Assigning attributes for utilization reporting

You assign work types when you define project types, project templates, projects, financial tasks, team roles, project requirements, and project assignments. You also assign a work types to expenditure items when you enter transactions.

You must define work types before you can create any of the following items in Oracle Projects:

• Team roles
• Project requirements
• Project assignments

If no work types exist, then you receive errors when you attempt to create these items.
 

Additional Information

Work Types

You define work types to represent a classification of work. You use work types to classify both actual and scheduled work. For example, a professional services enterprise could define the following work types:

1. Analysis
2. Design
3. External Training
4. Implementation
5. Non-Worked Time
6. Support

You can use work types to classify work for the following purposes:

• Determining the billability of expenditure items
• Classifying cross charge amounts into cost and revenue for cross-charged work
• Assigning attributes for utilization reporting

You assign work types when you define project types, project templates, projects, financial tasks, team roles, project requirements, and project assignments. You also assign a work types to expenditure items when you enter transactions.

You must define work types before you can create any of the following items in Oracle Projects:

• Team roles
• Project requirements
• Project assignments

If no work types exist, then you receive errors when you attempt to create these items.

Role List:
A role list specifies which roles are available on a project. You can specify a role list when you create a project.

• If you do not select a role list for a project, any role can be used on the project. The list of values of roles on the project displays all roles defined in the system.
• If you associate a role list with a project, you limit the roles that can be used on the project. The list of values displayed for roles is shorter and project–specific.

Calendar:
You can associate a calendar with a project, to specify the project’s primary work pattern for open and staffed assignments. The calendar is also used in workplans to determine the duration of tasks

User–Defined Project Attributes
In addition to the project–level attributes that are delivered with the application, you can also define project attributes that fit the unique needs of your enterprise. For example, an automobile manufacturer can use this functionality to create a set of attributes that associate vehicle specifications with specific manufacturing projects. An architectural
firm could create attributes that track the blueprints for different construction projects.

Using the Projects Super User responsibility, you can create groups of attributes and associate them with attribute contexts. The system uses attribute contexts to determine how it associates attribute groups with projects and tasks.

You can access project–level attribute groups through links on the Project Setup page.
You can also arrange for user–defined attributes to display in page regions. Project–level attributes can display in page regions on the Project Home, Project Overview, and Project Status Report pages. You can control at the template level whether the system displays user–defined attributes for projects.

Structures
Use this option enable the workplan structure for the project or template, to indicate whether workplan and financial structures are shared on the project, and to configure structures.

Work Quantity
You can use work quantity to plan and measure task progress in quantitative terms rather than in terms of completed effort, such as number of items manufactured or number of processes performed. The actual value can compared to a planned value to derive the base task percent complete.

For example, a construction company could have a task for the installation of windows on a new building. The task is complete when 50 windows are installed. When progress is taken on the task and 25 windows have installed, the task is 50% complete. This allows companies to track progress according to quantitative values.

You can enter work quantity either as an incremental value (the amount of work complete for a task since the last time progress was recorded for the task) or a cumulative value (the total amount of work complete for the task since the task began). This option is set at the workplan, task, and task type level.
You enable work quantity at the workplan level. You must also enable work quantity for each task that will measure progress using that method. A workplan can include tasks that measure progress in terms of effort as well as work quantity.

Allow Charges
This check box controls whether to allow new expenditure items to be charged to a task. You can only enter expenditure items at the lowest task. The default is to allow charges for all new tasks. You can only allow charges for lowest tasks. Parent tasks are not chargeable. Uncheck this check box if you want to prevent new charges to this task. Oracle Projects automatically unchecks the check box for a task when you create a child task for it.

Capitalizable
This check box controls whether the expenditure items you charge to the task are eligible for capitalization. The capitalizable indicator is applicable for capital projects only.

Retirement Cost
You can select this check box for a task on a capital project to indicate that the task is for retirement cost processing. When this option is enabled, all expenditure items charged to a task are designated as cost of removal or proceeds of sale amounts that pertain to retirement adjustment assets.

Billable
This check box controls whether the expenditure items you charge to the task are eligible for revenue accrual and billing. The billable indicator is applicable for contract projects only.

Costing Information

Burden Schedules
You must specify a cost burden schedule if you specify that a project type is burdened. The costing burden schedule defaults from the project type.

• You can enter the following information in the Costing Burden Schedules window:
• Burden Schedule: Enter the burden schedule you want to use for this project or task.
• Burden Hierarchy: Enter the burden hierarchy you want to default to each burden schedule version.
• Fixed Date: Enter a fixed date for the burden schedule if you want all expenditure items to be burdened with the multipliers in effect as of that date.

Budgetary Control
You define budgetary controls in the Budget Integration window. Budgetary controls enable you to use a project cost budget to monitor and control project–related commitment transactions. You also use these controls to integrate project budgets with non–project budgets.

Budget Type
For Budgetary Controls: Select a project cost budget type. (Budgetary controls can be enabled for cost budget types only.)

For Bottom–Up Budget Integration: Select a project budget type to be integrated. You can select any active budget type.
Control Flag. Check the Control Flag check box if you want to enable budgetary controls for the budget type. (Budgetary controls can be enabled for only one budget type per project.)
Balance Type. This field is used to define top–down and bottom–up budget integration.

For Bottom–Up Budget Integration: Select Budget. Non–Project Budget. This field is used to define top–down and
bottom–up budget integration.

For Bottom–Up Budget Integration: Select a General Ledger budget from the list of values. The list of values displays defined budgets with a status of Open or Current.

Encumbrance Type. This field is used to define top–down and bottom–up budget integration.

Levels 
Select a default control level for each budget level. When a baseline is created for the project budget, these control levels are used as default values for each budget level:
• Project
• Tasks
• Resource Groups. Select Default from Resource List if you have defined default control levels for your resource list.
• Resources. Select Default from Resource List if you have defined default control levels for your resource list.

Time Phase
The system uses these values to calculate available funds.
• Amount Type. Select an Amount Type to determine the beginning budget period.
• Boundary Code. Select a Boundary Code to determine the ending budget period.
For more information about defining control levels and time phases (also referred to as time intervals) for budgetary controls
 

Project Setup

Lookup

Project Types

The project type controls how Oracle Projects creates and processes projects, and is a primary classification for the projects your business manages. You must set up at least one project type to create projects in Oracle Projects.

Name: The name of the project type.

Class: The project type class (Indirect, Capital, or Contract) for the project type.
Note: You can define contract projects only if you have installed Oracle Project Billing.

Effective: The date range within which the project is valid
 

Details and Classification Tab

Details

Service Type: A service type is a custom reporting attribute that you assign to each financial task to represent activities that you want to track for financial purposes. You can use service types to group tasks for custom reporting. You can also use service types in your AutoAccounting setup. The default service type for each top-level financial task comes from the project type that you assign to its project or project template. The default service type for each subtask comes from its parent task.

You can use service type to represent the type of work for which the project is being created ex :Bid and Proposal , Administration, Consulting, Engine R & D

Role List: A role list specifies which roles are available on a project. You can specify a role list when you create a project.

If you do not select a role list for a project, any role can be used on the project. The list of values of roles on the project displays all roles defined in the system.

If you associate a role list with a project, you limit the roles that can be used on the project. The list of values displayed for roles is shorter and project-specific.

Work Type: You define work types to represent a classification of work. You use work types to classify both actual and scheduled work. The default work type for a project or project template comes from its project type.

Probability List: (optional) Enter a probability list. The probability list you enter provides the list of values for the Probability field for projects.

Administrative: Use this box to identify administrative indirect projects on which that you can create administrative assignments in Oracle Project Resource Management.

Unassigned Time: Enable this option if you want to track available resource time in utilization reporting.

Intercompany Billing: Choose this box if you want to use this project type for intercompany billing projects.

Organization Planning: You must define a unique project type to identify the organization projects that are used in organization forecasting. Define the project type for organization forecasting projects with a class of indirect and then enable the Organization Planning check box.

Sponsored: Enable this check box if you want to fund projects with awards in Oracle Grants Accounting. For additional information, see the Oracle Grants Accounting User Guide.

Contingent Worker Enabled: Enable this check box to include all purchase orders associated with contingent worker enabled projects available for selection when a contingent worker enters a timecard. If you do not enable this, only purchase orders associated with the project that the contingent worker entered on the timecard, are available for selection.

Project Classifications (All project types)

Category: Select a class category.
Note: Only categories that you have defined as valid for this project type on the Class Categories and Codes window are displayed in the Category list.

Mandatory: Enable the Mandatory check box if you want the system to require all projects of the project type to be associated with the selected class category.

You can also enable the Mandatory option in the Class Categories and Codes window.
Note: You cannot select Mandatory for class categories that are already associated with one or more projects of the project type.

Costing Information

Burdened: Indicates whether to burden raw costs charged to projects using this project type for internal costing purposes.

Schedule: The burden schedule to use as the default cost burden schedule. You enter a schedule only if the project type is burdened. If the project type is burdened, this field is required.

Allow Schedule Override: Indicates whether you can override the default cost burden schedule when entering and maintaining projects and tasks. Deselect the check box if you want to ensure that all projects of a project type use the same schedule for internal costing. Check the box to allow updates to the cost burden schedule on the projects and tasks. You can enter this only if you enabled the Burdened check box.

Burdening Options: If you select the Burdened check box, additional fields are displayed:

Burden cost on same expenditure item: Select if you want to store burden amount in the same expenditure item.

Account for Burden Cost components: Select this option to store the burden amount in the same expenditure item, and additionally to show the burden cost on separate, summarized expenditures on a separate project. Select a project and (optional) task that accounts for the expenditure item.

Note: This option works best if used with indirect projects. With other project types, the system may post duplicate amounts.

Burden Cost as separate expenditure item: Select this option if you want to account for burden amounts as a separate expenditure item.

Enable Accounting for Total Burdened Cost: Select if you want to generate accounting for the total burdened cost.

You can use the Project Status Inquiry Burdening Commitments Extension to override the setup for displaying burden costs of commitments. For more information, use the Integration SOA Gateway responsibility to access the Oracle Integration Repository and navigate to the Projects Suite to find Project Status Inquiry Burdening Commitments Extension.

Budget Option & Control

Budget Option

Allow Cost Budget Entry: Indicates if you allow entry of cost budget types.

Entry Method: The default budget entry method for cost budgets.

Resource List: The default resource list for cost budgets.

Allow Revenue Budget Entry: Indicates if you allow entry of revenue budget types. For contract projects, you must enter a revenue budget for a contract project before it can accrue revenue and be billed. For indirect and capital projects, you can choose to not allow entry of revenue budgets.

Entry Method: The default budget entry method for revenue budgets.

Resource List: The default resource list for revenue budgets.

Resource List for Status Reporting: The default resource list to use for summarizing project amounts for status reporting. You must enter a value to ensure that you can view information in the Project Status windows and project status reports, even when you have not baselined a budget for the project. You typically select the same resource list as one of the resource lists you use for budgeting. When you create a new project template from scratch, Oracle Projects automatically creates a resource list assignment using this resource list.

Budgetary Control

Enter values in this tabbed region if you want to set up budgetary controls and/or budget integration for the project type.

Allow Override at Project Level. Check this check box if you want to allow users to modify the default budgetary control settings that you enter for the project type.

The budgetary control settings for the project type are used when a project template or project is created. If this check box is not checked, the user cannot change the values at the project template or project level.

Budget Type.

For Budgetary Controls: Select a project cost budget type. (Budgetary controls can be enabled for cost budgets only.)

For Bottom-Up Budget Integration: Select a project budget type to be integrated. You can select any active budget type.

Control Flag. Check this check box to enable budgetary controls for the corresponding budget type. (Budgetary controls can be enabled for only one budget type per project type.)

Balance Type. This field is used to define top-down and bottom-up budget integration.

For Bottom-Up Budget Integration: Select Budget.

For Top-Down Budget Integration: Select Encumbrance.

For No Integration (Independent Budgetary Controls): Leave field blank.

Non-Project Budget. This field is used to define top-down and bottom-up budget integration.

For Bottom-Up Budget Integration: Select a General Ledger budget from the list of values. The list of values displays budgets with a status of Open or Current.

For Top-Down Budget Integration: Select the General Ledger Funding Budget from the list of values.

For No Integration (Independent Budgetary Controls): Leave field blank.

Levels. Select a default control level for each budget level:

Project

Tasks

Resource Groups. Select Default from Resource List if you have defined default control levels for your resource list.

Resources. Select Default from Resource List if you have defined default control levels for your resource list.

Time Phase. The system uses these values to calculate available funds.

Amount Type. Select an Amount Type to determine the beginning budget period.

Boundary Code. Select a Boundary Code to determine the ending budget period
 

Project Classifications (Class Categories and Class Codes)

You define project classifications to group your projects according to categories you define. A project classification includes a class category and a class code. The category is a broad subject within which you can classify projects. The code is a specific value of the category.

For example, if you want to know the market sector to which a project belongs, you can define a class category with a name such as Market Sector. You can define class codes for this category such as Waste Cleanup, Risk Analysis, and Environmental Engineering.

You can create a report that displays projects classified by a particular category. For example, if you classify your projects by market sector, you can create reports showing which market sectors generate the most revenue. Or, your marketing department could run a report to determine which markets need to be pursued more aggressively.

Oracle Projects does not predefine any class categories or class codes.

Defining class categories and class codes

Navigate to the Class Categories and Codes window.

1. Enter a unique Class Category name and a Description.

1.1 Specify whether the class category is mandatory for every project you define.

1.2 Enable if all projects must have a code assigned to this class category. Do not enable if this class category is optional. If you do not enable this option, you cannot use this class category in your AutoAccounting rules.

1.3 Specify whether you want to use the class category in your AutoAccounting rules.

Note: For each project, you can use only one code with one class category for use with AutoAccounting rules at a given point in time. If an AutoAccounting category already exists within a particular date range, assign an end date to the existing AutoAccounting category and then create a new one.

Attention: When you update the existing class code, the system does not mark expenditure items accounted prior to the change for recalculation.

1.4 Specify whether you want to allow entry of only one class code with this class category for a project.

Note: Defining multiple class codes for one category for a project may affect reporting by class category. Defining multiple class codes may cause your numbers to be included more than once.

 The Allow Percent Entry and Total Percent Equal 100 attributes control the ability to associate percentages with classification codes. When you have multiple classification codes associated with a single class category, you can report the relative values of your projects in terms of sales or a similar metric.

1.5 Allow Percent Entry: Enable this option if you want to associate percentages with the class codes associated with this category. When you select Allow Percent Entry for a category, the system requires class code percentages for the category regardless of the project type.

Total Percent 100: Enable this option if you want the system to require that the sum of all class code percentages be equal to 100 for the selected class category. You can clear this option at any time.

2.1 In the Class Codes tabbed region, enter the Name, Description, and Effective Dates for each class code.

2.2 In the Project Types tabbed, select each Project Type that you would like to associate with this class category.

2.2.1 Mandatory: Enable the Mandatory check box for a project type if you want the system to require all projects of the project type to be associated with the selected class category.

Note: You cannot select Mandatory for project types that are already associated with one or more projects. Also, if the AutoAccounting attribute was enabled in a previous session for the class category, the system does not let you disable the Mandatory selection for a project type until the AutoAccounting attribute is disabled for the class category.

You can also enable the Mandatory option in the Project Types window.

Project Templates

Project templates enable you to quickly create projects that share common features and have a number of predefined attributes and options. After you create a new project using a project template, you can customize it to make it unique, if necessary. The Quick Entry feature makes it easy for you to define specific project attributes (such as the project name, project description, or classification) whenever you create a project based on a project template.

You can set up any kind of project as a template, and define different combinations of default project options for each template. You can create a single template for use throughout your organization or a variety of templates to fit different business needs. A project template includes the following elements:

• Basic project information, such as the Operating Unit the template belongs to, the Name, Number, and Description of the project template
• Project structures: financial and workplan
• Agreement and funding (optional)
• Project and task options
• Budgets and forecasts

Quick Entry fields that specify values that must be defined whenever you create a new project from a template (such as the project name, project number, and start and finish dates)

Project Option controls that list the project options to display for new projects created from a template

Controls enabling the display of user-defined attributes for projects and tasks

Note: In a multi-organization environment, project templates belong to only one operating unit. Project templates can only be maintained and copied within an operating unit. However, project template numbers are unique across operating units. A project template number cannot duplicate any project or project template number within the Oracle Projects installation.
 

Project Roles & Role Lists

Project roles are a part of the project-based security features that are used to control user access to project-level information. Project roles serve two purposes:

• You use roles when you define project-based security.

• In Project Resource Management, you use roles to define default information about a team member role on a project, such as competencies, job information, and security. You create project roles to represent the typical team member roles needed for projects in your organization.

Oracle Projects comes seeded with a Project Manager role. To give a project Active status, you must define one team member as Project Manager on the project

Defining Project Roles

If you are using Project Resource Management, project roles are the templates for creating resource requirements. For each project role, you enter the default for competencies and job information for resource requirements created based on the role. Competencies and job levels are used for requirements search, and job groups and jobs drive forecasting.

To define a project role Navigate to the Roles window.

Enter the information shown on the following table.

Role Controls
You can also assign role controls to a role. You use role controls to define an additional dimension of security layering.

You can assign as many role controls to roles as necessary. For example, the control Allow as Scheduled Member indicates that you can schedule any person assigned to the role as their availability permits. You assign this control to any role that should be available for scheduling resources on projects. Because role assignments occur at the project level, you must, at a minimum, assign the role control Allow as Project Member to each role.

You use project roles to grant team members view access to project labor cost details. By default, a project team member can access all project-level information with the exception of labor cost details. To grant view access to labor cost details, you must select the Allow Labor Cost Query role control.
 

 
Role Lists
You use role lists to categorize your roles into logical groupings. Role lists enable enhances control and ease of use when you assign team members to a project.

For example, you may have a role list called Consulting to which all roles relating to consulting are assigned.

To add, modify, or delete role lists:

• Navigate to the Role Lists window.
• Specify the name, description, and effective dates for the role list.
• Select the roles you want assigned to the role list.
• Note: You cannot delete a role list after it has been associated with a project.
   

Customer Relationships & Contact Types

Project customer relationships help you manage projects that involve multiple clients by specifying the various relationships your customers can have with a project. A customer has exactly one relationship with a given project; one or more customers can have the same relationship with a project.

For example, most projects have a single customer who is the main client on the project; you can define a relationship with a name such as Primary to indicate the major client on a project.

Contact types specify how the contacts of a particular customer are involved with a project. You can use project contacts to direct certain pieces of correspondence, such as invoices, to the appropriate customer contact.

For example, if your client identifies a specific employee as the technical resource for questions about that client's project, you can classify that employee using a contact type. First, you create a contact type with a name such as Technical. Later, when you define a project or modify your definition of that project, you assign the Technical contact type to the appropriate customer contact.

 Pre requisites
First create a contact for the customer

 Next, add the customer bill to contact at the project level.

1. Billing
2. Shipping

Budget

Budget Types

Budget types define the different types of budgets and forecasts that you plan for when you want to create budgets and forecasts that use Oracle Projects budgetary controls and budget integration features.

You designate each budget type as either a cost budget type or a revenue budget type. For a cost budget type, you can enter quantities, raw cost amounts, and burdened cost amounts. For a revenue budget type, you can enter quantities and revenue amounts.

You can use any budget type for project status tracking.

Oracle Projects predefines four budget types:

• Approved Cost Budget
• Approved Revenue Budget
• Forecast Cost Budget
• Forecast Revenue Budget

You can define additional budget types during implementation. For example, your company may want to create a separate budget type from the Approved Cost Budget to track what if scenarios for future project alternatives.

Revenue/Invoices Based on Percent Complete

Oracle Projects can generate revenue and invoices based on the financial physical percent complete that you enter for a project. You can enter the physical percent complete for all  the levels in the financial breakdown structure (FBS). However, to generate revenue or invoices based on physical percent complete, you must have physical percent complete at the funding level (project or top task).

You enter physical percent complete for an As Of Date. Oracle Projects can maintain physical percent complete history. When you use physical percent complete as the basis for revenue accrual or generation of draft invoices, Oracle Projects uses the As Of Date to determine the corresponding physical percent complete.
Depending on the type of integration between the workplan and financial structure on a project, Oracle Projects can update physical percent complete on the financial structure using the physical percent complete for tasks on the workplan structure.

Revenue accrual based on physical percent complete is different from percent complete based on a budget (Actual Cost / Budgeted Cost). The method based on budgets, is also sometimes referred to as Percent Spent or Cost-to-Cost Revenue Accrual. Revenue accrual based on physical percent complete is also different from revenue accrual on an as-work-occurs (or time and materials) basis, where the total potential revenue is the sum of the revenue of all expenditure items plus events.

Oracle Projects performs the physical percent complete revenue calculation using the following predefined billing extensions:
• Percent Complete Revenue
• Percent Complete Invoicing
The revenue and invoice processes call the appropriate billing extension to calculate the revenue or invoice amount and to create an event.

Notes :
1. Distribution rule is event/event