Mass updating purchases

ITM Platform allows you to perform operations on a group of project purchases by navigating to the purchases section and selecting the purchases you require. The selection is made by ticking the tick box to the left of each purchase.

As soon as you start making your selection, you can see the number of purchases you selected at the bottom of the list, and three options are enabled.

• Copy: Copies the selected purchases to another project, as explained in more detail in the section on copying purchases. Apart from copying purchases, you can choose to include the tasks related to the purchases you are copying.
• Edit: It allows editing several fields of the selected purchases in a mass update process, as explained in the next section.
• Delete: Deletes all selected purchases. Before deleting the purchases, ITM Platform will ask for your confirmation.

Update purchases

Clicking the option “Edit” opens a pop-up showing how many purchases you are editing.

Clicking on the option “see which,” you get a list of the selected purchases.

The pop-up allows setting several options applied to the selected purchases.

• Status: Select the status you want to apply to all selected purchases or select “Keep Current” if you want to keep the status unchanged.
• Type: Select the type you want to apply to all selected purchases or select “Keep Current” if you want to keep the status unchanged.
• Purchase Budget: Select the purchase budget you want to apply to all selected purchases or select “Keep Current” if you want to keep the purchase budget unchanged.
• Provider: Select the provider you want to apply to all selected purchases or select “Keep Current” if you want to keep the provider unchanged.
• Projected amount: When mass updating the projected amount of purchases, you can choose from three options from the dropdown menu.
  • Keep Current: Leaves the projected amount of each purchase unchanged
  • Fixed amount: Choose this option to apply a fixed amount to all purchases. All edited purchases will have the same projected amount.
  • Percentage: Choose this option to multiply the projected amount of each purchase with a percentage. The edited purchases can have distinct projected amounts.
• Actual amount: When mass updating the actual amount of purchases, you can choose from three options from the dropdown menu. Please note that the changes will only apply to purchases with a status that allows for an actual amount.
  • Keep Current: Leaves the actual amount of each purchase unchanged.
  • Fixed amount: Choose this option to apply a fixed amount to all purchases. All edited purchases will have the same actual amount.
  • Percentage: Choose this option to multiply the projected amount of each purchase with a percentage. The edited purchases can have distinct actual amounts.
• Due Date: Select the due date you want to apply to all selected purchases or select “Keep Current” if you want to keep the due date unchanged. Please note that the due date will remain unchanged for purchases that depend on a task.

Once you are satisfied with the changes, click Next to apply them. Once you confirm, the changes may take up to a minute to appear on the purchases.

Mass copying purchases 

ITM Platform allows you to perform operations on a group of project purchases by navigating to the purchases section and selecting the purchases you require. The selection is made by ticking the tick box to the left of each purchase.

As soon as you start making your selection, you can see the number of purchases you selected at the bottom of the list, and three options are enabled.

• Copy: Copies the selected purchases to another project, as explained in more detail in the section on copying purchases. Apart from copying purchases, you can choose to include the tasks related to the purchases you are copying.
• Edit: It allows editing several fields of the selected purchases in a mass update process, as explained in the next section.
• Delete: Deletes all selected purchases. Before deleting the purchases, ITM Platform will ask for your confirmation.

Copying purchases

Clicking the option “Copy” opens a pop-up showing how many purchases will be copied.

Clicking on the option “see which,” you get a list of the selected purchases.
The pop-up allows setting several options that will be applied when copying the list of selected purchases.

• Destination Project: Select the project you want to copy the selected purchases from a dropdown list of all available projects. By writing in the field, you can filter the list.
• Dates: The due dates of all purchases will automatically be adapted based on the difference in start dates between the origin and destination project.
• Status: Select the status you want to apply to the purchases copied to the destination project or select “Keep Current” if you want to keep the status unchanged.
• Include descriptions: Select this option to include the descriptions in the copied purchases.
• Include documents: Select this option if you want to include the documents of the copied purchases.
• Include custom field values: Select this option if you want to include the custom field values of the copied purchases.
• Include provider: Select this option if you want to include the provider in the copied purchases.
• Include projected amount: Select this option if you want to include the projected amount of the copied purchases. Leave the field on the right empty if you want to copy the amounts of the origin project or set a percentage to multiply the projected amounts with.
• Include purchase number: Select this option to include the purchase number of the copied purchases.
  Include actual amount: Select this option to include the actual amount of the copied purchases. Leave the field on the right empty if you want to copy the amounts of the origin project or set a percentage to multiply the actual amounts with.
• Include related tasks: Select this option if you want to include the tasks related to the selected purchases, as explained in more detail in the “Include related tasks” section below.

Click ” Next ” to proceed once you are happy with the selected options. Before copying the purchases, ITM Platform gives you a summary of the purchases to be copied and a list of warnings, if applicable.

When you receive warnings on the summary screen, you can either choose to cancel and include additional purchases in the selection to fix these issues or choose to proceed. Once you confirm, the copied purchases may take up to a minute to appear in the destination project.

Include related tasks purchases

Select this option to include the purchases that depend on the tasks to be copied. When you select the option, a section with additional options is opened.

• Dates: The dates of all tasks will automatically be adapted based on the difference in start dates between the origin and destination project.
• Status: Select the status you want to apply to all tasks copied to the destination project or select “Keep Current” if you want to keep the status unchanged.
• Priority: Select the priority you want to apply to all tasks copied to the destination project or select “Keep Current” if you want to keep the priority unchanged.
• Type: Select the type you want to apply to all tasks copied to the destination project or select “Keep Current” if you want to keep the type unchanged.
• Include descriptions: Select this option to include the task descriptions in the copied tasks.
• Include documents: Select this option if you want to include the documents of the copied tasks.
• Include custom field values: Select this option if you want to include the custom field values of the copied tasks.
• Include dependencies: Select this option to include the relations between predecessor and copied tasks. Relations between predecessor tasks and copied tasks can only be copied if the predecessor task and the dependent task are included in the list of selected tasks.
• Include task members: Select this option to include the assigned task members on the tasks to be copied. A section with an additional option is opened when you select the option.

• Assign team members to the destination project. If you select this option, team members are automatically added to the destination project if they are task members on one or more copied tasks. If the option is unselected, any task member that is not a team member on the destination project will not be included.

Cost of the estimated hours.

To have a cost estimation for projects and services, ITM Platform allows you to establish the cost per professional profile, used to calculate the estimated budget for a given task or project.

Professional profiles accept ranges of values. For example – A “Junior Engineer” as an employee (in-house) can have assigned a cost of $30/hr from 1 – 15 January, and then $35/hr from 16 January onwards. To estimate the cost for a task to be completed between 1 –30 January, the system will automatically multiply the assigned hours by the hourly rate, for each day. For example:

• Task: Draw a Turbine

• Junior Engineer Assigned: Cairo Martell

• Total hours spent: 80hr

• Hour distribution: Uniform, 4hr/day, 20 days

       - 1-15 January: 20hr
       - 16-30 January: 20hr

• Hourly cost of this task:

       - 1-15 January: 20hr x $30/hr = $600
       - 16-30 January: 20hr x $35/hr = $700
           Total cost of this task = $1,300

• Purchases for this task: $2,000

       - Total cost of this task: $3,300

To be able to perform the calculations aforementioned, each task should have a defined starting and ending date. Therefore, one would be able to determine which hourly rate should apply, based on the professional profile. Since ITM Platform allows for tasks to have neither of the two dates, the calculations will be done according to:

• If both starting and ending dates are provided, the previous methodology will be applied, calculating the hourly cost every day.
• If only either the starting or ending date is provided, the hourly rate of the current day will be applied on the total hours spent in a given task.
• If neither date is provided, the standard cost at the calculation time and date will be applied on the total hours spent in a given task.

The aforementioned will also be applied to provider rates.

The calculations for estimated hour cost can be found in project list (task-list), services, tasks and activities, details in the Commitment section of each task, budget section of a given project or service, tables, P&L reports and API methods.

Other related articles: Resource Planning.

Professional profiles & Standard costs

Professional profiles

ITM Platform calculates the costs of tasks and projects based on the professional profiles (categories) and at standard costs and rates.

ITM Platform employs a classification of professional profiles. To assign a user to a task or activity they must have been assigned to at least one position within the organization which will in turn link them to a profile.

From the ORGANIZATION menu, select Category And Rates 1 and add a new category:

The only required detail which you must provide is the Category Name 2.

This allows ITM Platform to calculate the cost estimates and actual costs based on the professional profile the individual belongs to.

The recommendation is to use profiles known to the organization, or otherwise profiles accepted in the profession. For example, in the case of IT this could be engineer, analyst, marketing technician, etc.

Standard costs

ITM Platform calculates the costs of tasks and projects based on the professional profiles and at standard costs and rates, and can distinguish costs according to the following types: global standard cost and cost by profile or category.

Go to the menu ORGANIZATION, COSTING option, and select Category And Rates. On Global Standard Cost 1 indicates the cost types if neither the working team nor the corresponding professional profile has been defined.

In the section Categories Standard Cost 2 the standard costs are created for internal personnel.

The following layout shows how costs are defined and used in ITM Platform.

What do the several columns on project’s budget section mean?

The cost elements administered within ITM Platform projects are those of hours and external procurement or acquisitions (invoices). In the simplest of terms, let’s say that a project consumes “n” hours at a cost of “x” and that it also consumes external resources, such as materials for example, for a total value of “z”. In this case, consumption by the project will amount to n hours * x dollars + z material costs.

There are three main blocks related to budgets and supervision handled by ITM Platform:

• Budget: ❶ This is the amount of money assigned to the project. This is also what we call top-down, because it goes from the decision on how much money to make available for the project down to a more detailed analysis. This can be defined as a total amount for the project, setting other figures depending on whether they refer to internal or external staff, etc.
• Cost Estimate or bottom-up ❷: This is the cost assessment made by the system based on the hours and procurement estimates made by the Project Manager at the planning stage. For example, let’s say that the project will consume “n1” hours on one task and “n2” hours on another, and that it will use “z1” materials for manufacturing and “z2” materials for commercial activity. The sum total of all these figures will produce an estimated cost as the schedule and project are updated with progress over time.
• Real: ❸ This is easier to understand, probably the most helpful aspect and that which makes the system complete. It shows the number of hours reported by each member of the project team. Calculated in real time and based on standard costs and fees, they are used to generate real consumption and cost figures at any given time. Similarly, any invoices received and assigned to the project will be added to the corresponding section.

The procurement calculation is not a complex one. It merely allows for the separation of invoices under different budgetary headings and for each invoice to be assigned to specific suppliers.

However, the hourly cost calculation deserves a little more explanation:

ITM Platform includes a comprehensive standard cost system that enables values to be set for each professional profile, whether they relate to internal or external personnel. The Project Manager need not be concerned with establishing these relationships as the system does so automatically when allocating the project team to the tasks and estimating their effort.