System Settings Editor Reporting Tab

To reach this screen go to Administration Tab | Setup Heading | System Settings | Reporting subtab and click edit.

Permissions and Settings

To make changes on this tab you need the global permission System Settings set to Update.

RDC rates are maintained on the Resource Direct Costs Rate Card Editor.

Reports that include utilization are the Ginsu Report, Utilization Report, and Variance Report.

Base Percent Complete On

This setting is one of the most fundamental in Projector. It applies to Fixed Price contracts and is designed to support the standard accounting practice of recognizing revenue in accordance to how much work has been completed. This percent complete method requires that you have a plan in the form of booked hours. Booked hours represent the work you plan to do and when you will do it. That way Projector can look at what you have done, what you plan to do, and determine how far along you are. Projector uses System Settings Editor Reporting Tab to determine how 'done' you are. Each is explained in the table below along with an example.

Projector provides two other means of revenue recognition on Fixed Price projects. These are a revenue schedule which recognizes revenue according to a fixed calendar and manual recognition in which you decide the amount to recognize and when it should be recognized. To learn more about revenue recognition in general please see Management Portal - Rev Rec. If you are using a revenue schedule or manual revenue recognition then you may think the choice here doesn't apply to you, but you would be wrong! If you have not yet locked down revenue through your schedule or manually, then Projector reports fall back on the Percent Complete method. To keep your reports accurate, you should choose the method that best suits you as a fallback.

Calculate RDC Basis Hours As

RDC Basis Hours are used in two important measurements in Projector.

• UBH for Yield based reports - Yield based utilization compares the number of hours someone worked vs. what you expected them to work. So if Charlie bills 30 hours and is expected to bill 40 hours then his yield utilization is 75%.
• Calculating the RDC of a resource - RDC of a resource depends on whether the resource is salaried or hourly. For this example, let's assume salaried. If Charlie is paid $100 an hour and has 40 hour work week, then his cost is $4k. 

The common factor in both cases is the number of hours that Charlie is expected to work in a week, 40 hours. And that is exactly where your choice for this setting comes in. Let's look at two different cases and just focus on billable utilization (case 1). In a week with no time-off and no vacation we've already established that Charlie had 75% utilization for billing 30 of 40 hours. But now let's say there is a holiday that week. You can look at it in two ways:

The first way is to subtract holidays from the UBH hours. In this case Charlie worked 30 hours of 32 and his billable utilization is now 94%. The other is leave those hours in and Charlie's utilization stays at 75% despite the fact that there was a holiday.

So why choose one method over the other? Doesn't excluding holidays and time-off from the equation cause Charlie's UBH to drop from 94% to 75%? Isn't that unfair to him? One argument could be for leveling the playing field between different resources. If you have some resources that only use two vacation days in a year, but others that use twenty, this setting benefits the people that spend more time in the office. 

Calculate Capacity-Based Utilization Basis Hours As

Most installations should be set to the default, Normal Working Hours - Holidays - Time Off. When thinking about this setting, it is best to consider it in the context of its sibling setting, Calculate RDC Basis Hours As. When that setting is set to NWH or NWH - Holidays, it is most often done to level out seasonal variation in utilization reporting. However, leveling out yield can negatively impact capacity based utilization. For example, if Charlie takes two vacation days in a week, you may have only gotten 3/5 yield, but his capacity really is 3/3. The yield and capacity settings used to be linked, but we have since decoupled them. That is why this setting includes legacy options for NWH or NWH - Holidays. However, as stated initially, we recommend NWH - Holidays - Time off unless you can think of a specific reason why another setting makes more sense.

Calculate Utilization For

The Calculate Utilization for setting determines whether you want to see Yield or Capacity based utilization numbers by default in your reports. This setting just affects the default, you can always change it on an individual report as needed. To learn more about utilization numbers and how they are calculated please see the UBH section of the Utilization Report.