Hi,

I’ve got a question from one of my Blog Readers:

“Hi!
I am wondering how you would manage a rate increase in MS Project halfway through the project that is not retroactive. If I change the $/hr for a resource, it re-calculates the total cost for the project with the new rates. Which is not reality. I wonder if you already tackled this type of problem in one of your projects and how you went about solving it.

Thank you.”

I will show you this in MS PROJECT 2016

First I will setup a Brand new Project for my example:

and I will crate Three different resources:

Finally, I’m going to assign Resources to Tasks:

As you can see, in the Cost Field, which I put in the Gant Chart View:

• Task 1 has Cost = $800 (John will work 1 day * 8 hours per day * $100 per hour = $800)
• Task 2 has Cost = $3200 (Mary will work 2 days * 8 hours per day * $200 per hour = $3200)
• Task 3 has Cost = $7200 (Peter will work 3 days * 8 hours per day * $300 per hour = $7200)

Now suppose that I want to change rate for someone. If I do it via Resource sheet like this (I will double it for each Resource):

I will get:

So, that is not what my Reader wants. To avoid retroactive change of Costs when you change rates, you can do only one thing.

and:

Let’s look at Tsk Usage View now:

Let me explain what happens now:

1. Mary will work at Task 2, which has two days Duration at two different rates: $200 to 17.05.2016, and $300 from 18.05.2016, and cost for this Task is 8 hours * $200 + 8 hours * $300 = 1600 (at 17.05.2016) + $2400 (at 18.05.2016) = $4000
2. Peter will work at Task 3, which has three days Duration at two different rates: $300 to 20.05.2016, and $100 from 21.05.2016, and cost for this Task is 16 hours * $300 + 8 hours * $100 = 4800 ($2400 at 19.05.2016, and $2400 at 20.05.206) + $800 (at 23.05.2016) = $5600

So if you want to change cost rates with no affect to the past dates, you should follow my example.

BUT! If you want to change cost rate for some date, and avoid changing cost for tasks in this period (for example, you have cost rate $100 for 21.05.2016, and you change this to $200)- forget it. This is now possible!

Whenever you change cost rate for resource global, or for some period all tasks in which this resource is involved in that period will change their costs! That is how MS PROJECT works, and that is not a bug but reasonable behavior!

Regards!