Understanding How Costs Display in P6 R8

So you’re viewing a monthly display on the Team Usage page in the web and wondering why the Actual Cost values each month do not match your monthly stored period performance values for Actual Cost.  Don’t be alarmed.  Your database has not been corrupted by a super bug, and possibly more important, you did not screw anything up!

The P6 Stored Period Costs will never match up month to month with the Actual Costs shown on the spread in the Team Usage view.  In P6 web, the Team Usage view is designed to take the overall Actual Cost for an activity and distribute it based on the elapsed duration of the activity.  Like it or not, the Actual Costs will display based on the number of days in each month; what “it” views as elapsed time.   This is true whether you have an integrated solution for updating actuals in P6, you are using timesheets (Progress Reporter) or you have manually entered in actuals at the activity level.  If you need an Actual Cost spread based on stored periods, the best way to get that information is from the Resource Assignments view in the web or P6 Professional client tool.  The Assignments view in both of these tools allow you bring in Period Actuals based on Stored Period Performance Financial Periods. 

So what good is the Team Usage page if you can’t use it for Actual Costs?  If you’re looking to forecast costs and need to know what your Remaining Costs are by month, for example, the Team Usage page is your quickest option in the web because it doesn’t need any filtering and little,if any, formatting.  The Remaining Costs are simply spread through the remaining duration of the activity.  P6 also takes into consideration any resource curves that may be assigned when creating the Remaining Cost spread. So now that the expectations are clear, you and the Team Usage page can be friends again!

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