I need to allocate our project people costs to applications which already have associated project costs.

What is the best way to do this?

Julie,

Do you have another allocation line that you are spreading up to applications?  If so the way that I have done this in the past is the following:

Within the model I'd go to the Applications object and do "Show\Hide Columns" and type in driver.  Then I'd select all the "Cost" drivers that are coming into that object.  

I would export this for ease of copying and building the metric that you'd want to have calculated.  The brackets have to be around each of the drivers.  

In this example I am taking two of the service allocations for the cost drivers of Indirect_1 and Direct and adding them together in order to weight my third allocation by this amount (at the BU level).  

Once you have created the metric you can draw the allocation line on the model and use the "Weight By" selection to choose your newly created metric. 

Cheers,

Ryan

Yes I do have another allocation line - basically we have projects to applications where allocated one keys. We then have a dummy project which takes on all labor costs mapped to projects but not time tracked to a specific project i.e. the PMs and PMO teams.

I will give this a go and see what happens - although be good to hear how others have been allocating this cost too

Hi Julie,

     I have done this several times with others.  My recommended approach is to take all the non-time tracking project related spend which you have defined as PM's and general PMO overhead costs and allocate them to the Projects object weighted by the hours each month in the Projects object.  This ensures a fair allocation of these projected related overhead costs ONLY to projects with worked hours that month and provides a defensible strategy in that the more heavily worked a project the more overhead it will receive, as that is a natural assumption one could make (the project with the most hours, required or received the most PM time as well).  Hope this helps.

-Matthew

Thanks Matthew - we were doing this already but a decision has been made which means we are in the process of moving away from time tracking so cost was our second option.

Time based allocation was working great before this change

Hi Ryan,

I've done as per above but my new metric doesn't appear in the weighted by drop down menu. Would you know why that could be?

Julie,

First can you take a screenshot of the metric (particularly the formula).  Second, could take a check the model if you click on the object where the allocation line is going into (i.e. Applications) you can click on drivers (on the right hand side).  Next would be do they match (name wise).  

Third a way to check to make sure that the metric is working is in the metrics tab if you select the metric and choose the object that's totaling for the weighting (i.e. Applications) you should see dollar figures for the Object Identifiers.  

It could be due to the following reasons;

1. Metric is not working correctly

2. Going to a different object (i.e. Services)

Cheers,

Ryan

Hi Ryan, it was reason 1 - there was a typo. All working wonderfully now - thank you for your help

So update on the above. We have taken all non-project tracked time for all Project Mgmt & Client Mgmt labor, created a dummy project called Project Overhead the using the metric stated above, have allocated these Project Overhead costs to all applications receiving costs by the Project to Application allocation line (if that makes sense )