OVERVIEW – The Project Management module enables you to define your organization's global financial periods in the Financial Periods dialog box. Customized financial periods provide more accurate display and reporting of actual units and costs. Rather than spreading costs evenly throughout the length of a project, users can view how actual costs were incurred by customized financial period.

If your organization always updates the schedule according to the same time interval (i.e., every week, every month, every quarter, etc.), you can quickly create a batch of financial periods. If the schedule may be updated irregularly, you can create a single financial period at any time.

When financial periods exist in the Financial Period dictionary, users can store period performance (past period actuals) for any defined period. When you store period performance, actual units and costs are stored as past period actuals. The past period actual values can be edited for any financial period in columns of the Activity Table and Activity Details, Resources tab. Past period actual spreads per financial period can be viewed in the Activity Usage Spreadsheet and Resource Usage Spreadsheet, and past period actual data can be displayed in profiles, time-distributed reports, and the Tracking view.

In P6 Web Access, if financial periods are properly defined in the Project Management module, users can customize charts and spreadsheets to display a financial period timescale. When activity and resource data is summarized by financial period, financial period timescale intervals display summarized activity and assignment data in P6 Web Access. Data does not have to be stored as past period actuals to display in financial period timescale intervals; however, financial period timescale intervals do display past period actuals for projects when you store period performance and summarize the project.

Users can also enter or edit high-level assignment planning values in financial period intervals in the Resource Planning Spreadsheet (Plan Resources page). These high-level assignment planning values are reflected in the Resource Usage Profile in the Project Management module. - Primavera

Tip: To ensure that data is displayed correctly in financial period timescale intervals in both P6 Web Access and the Project Management module, activity and resource data must be summarized by financial period. To summarize project data by financial period, choose Admin, Preferences, then select the Options tab. In the 'Select summarization periods' section, choose the 'By financial period' option; for each project, data will be stored in financial period intervals the next time you summarize the project.

As always, let’s copy and the last project GLB – Global Changes and name the new one FIN – Financial Periods. Open the new project.
In the activity view, click on the Resources tab and highlight the first activity L2-1000. Since this activity is 100% let’s copy the 35000 from the Budgeted Units cell and paste it into the Actual Units and Actual Cost cells.

Note – You cannot copy the $35,000.00 from the Budgeted Cost cell and paste it into units because of formatting issues.

TIP – Changing settings on an already populated project can lead to errors within your project. Try as best as possible to setup your project correctly or the way you want it from the beginning to avoid headaches in the end. Changing the % complete type is an example of something you want to try to avoid in an already populated schedule.
To better be able to see what we are doing, in the activity table add the Budgeted Total Cost & Actual Total Cost columns. Additionally, get rid of the Total Float & Calendar columns.
The default setting in Primavera is to show cents for all money related fields. However, most projects will not require this setting and it makes everything look more cluttered. Therefore let’s change this by going to the menu-bar and clicking Edit. Select User Preferences from the drop-down menu.
The User Preferences window is displayed. Click on the Currency tab on the left-hand side.
Uncheck the Show decimal digits box and click Close.
All money related columns are now just displaying whole dollars.

Note – If you are not going down to the cent, there will be a small discrepancy between the schedule and actual project accounting.
Go ahead and give actuals to all of the other activities with 100% status.
For activity L2-1070, with 15% status, go down to the Resources panel and make sure that the Remaining Units cell says 2200. If it doesn’t, type it in there. Now go over to the Units % Complete cell and type 15 to match the Physical % Complete value.
Typing 15 into the Units % Complete cell will automatically cause the Actual Units cell to be equal to 15% of the budgeted units. You can then copy the Actual Units cell value and paste it into the Actual Cost cell.

TIP – Whenever possible it is good to simplify your project as much as possible. Instead of manually copying and pasting units and costs, you can setup each individual resource to “calculate costs from units” in the Resource View under the Details tab. Doing this will cause you to drop a step which may not be a big deal with one activity, but can save some time when doing several hundred.
With all of the activities resources statused we can now begin setting up the Financial Periods. Now, since we have yet to work with Financial Periods we need to do a one-time setup of them. Go to Admin on the menu bar and click Financial Periods from the drop-down menu.
The Financial Periods window is displayed showing that we currently have none setup. Let’s go ahead and batch create some financial periods so that we can store our financial progress. Under Batch Start Date put 01-Jun-11 and under Batch End Date 31-Dec-11.
Directly below that section you need to choose what interval at which financial periods occur. Click the Every Month radio button and make it every 1 month.
Now, that we have the parameters for the batch create setup click Batch Create at the bottom.
Click Yes on the windows dialogue box that comes up.
7 Financial Periods should have been created till the end of the year. Click Close.
We still aren’t ready to store the financial period. First, we need to go back to User Preferences window by clicking Edit on the menu bar and selecting User Preferences.
Once the User Preferences window comes up, click the Application tab.
At the bottom of this section we need to choose which financial periods we can see via columns. Click the box with three dots to bring up a selection box. Double-click the first Financial Period, 2011-06-01.
In the second box do the same thing except choose the 2011-12-01 Financial Period so that we can see the full range of financial periods. Click Close.
Let’s now add two more columns: COST - Actual This Period Nonlabor Cost & FINANCIAL PERIOD VALUE – 2011-06-01:Earned Value Cost.
Unfortunately, Primavera 5/6 does not have a column for an overall Actual This Period Cost so therefore we are using Actual This Period Nonlabor Cost since we are using strictly Nonlabor Resources. The other column, 2011-06-01:Earned Value Cost for our purposes is strictly a Total Cost this Period field that will store the total amount billed for for this period. Right now, this column should be completely empty.
We are finally ready to store the financial period. To do so, click Tools on the menu bar and select Store Period Performance.
The Store Period Performance window pops-up. Our currently open project is displayed in the window along with the Financial Period that we are going to store all actual costs.
Go ahead and click Store Now and click Yes when prompted.
Notice that all of the Actual This Period Nonlabor Cost data is now transferred to the financial period. Once we begin statusing activities for the next month the Actual This Period Nonlabor Cost column will once again become populated with actuals until we once again store the financial period for July.
Lastly, save the layout as Rm. 201 – Financial.

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