I want to make jan and feb columns in the contracts tab match actuals in the Opex tab (coming form actuals loaded), but ITPF wont let me edit the month columns in the contracts tab.

The monthly amounts in the contracts tab are driven by the columns to the left, and that is fine to define the list of contracts, but as I get actuals I need the ability to make changes. We may have a contract that is for 1/1/16 to 12/31/16, but we may not have made our first payment until March and that month we will pay for jan-mar and then it will be amortized from that point.

I was assuming it would be just like the labor tab, where we have a start and end date and a base salary and qty, but we still have the option to manual manipulate the amounts in each month. What alternatives do I have to forecast when something will get paid which could be very different from coverage period

This is the answer I got from the product office:

Currently the system does not allow edit generated line items. A user can enter contract details (type, start date, end date, amount) which the system uses to automatically generate budget line items using the entered contract details (one budget line per contract line); however, these generated line items are read-only.

To support your use case of forecasting when a contract gets paid, you could enter in an Opex line item for that contract that adjusts the payment schedule. For example, if you had a contract for 1/1/16 to 12/31/16 but you did not make your first payment until March you could enter an Opex line item with a negative amount for Jan and Feb to zero out the generated payment amount and add the amount to Mar.

The better long term solution would be an actuals reconciliation feature which is on our IT Planning roadmap