Locked lesson.

Upgrade

About this lesson

The best approach to adding these costs is to create cost type resources and assign them to tasks. Once you have a task that represents the cost for the project, you can assign the appropriate cost resources to the task and then enter the amount.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2013, 2019/365.

Quick reference

Add Costs to the Project

If you are following this lesson in the intended order, you will have a Microsoft Project file that contains resource costs. However, it does not include other budget costs like house material, and the cost to acquire the land.

The best approach to adding these costs is to create cost type resources and assign them to tasks. Sometimes you may not already have tasks in place to represent these costs so you will create a new one. Once you have a task that represents the cost for the project, you can assign the appropriate cost resources to the task and then enter the amount.

Steps

To create budget costs for your resources, follow these steps:

  • Go to the resource sheet and add resources that represent costs.
  • For each cost resource, change the type column to cost.
  • In the Gantt chart view, create a new task (or locate an existing one) that will include the new cost.
  • Assign the cost resources to various tasks and then using the details view to type in how much cost you want to include in the project.
Login to download
  • 00:04 When we built our project schedule, we added resources.
  • 00:09 And those resources have an hourly rate.
  • 00:12 But so far we only have resources that represent people doing work.
  • 00:17 It does not actually represent costs for the project,
  • 00:21 such as purchasing the land for the house, purchasing equipment to
  • 00:26 build the house and purchasing all of our home interior furnishings.
  • 00:32 So we can build a budget for that in Microsoft Project.
  • 00:36 And in this lesson, I'm going to show you how to do that.
  • 00:38 In order to add the resources for costs,
  • 00:41 we start by entering the resource name just as we did previously.
  • 00:51 With these resources added,
  • 00:53 the next thing we want to do is define them as cost based resources.
  • 00:58 So you can see here, there's a type column and
  • 01:02 we can choose work, material and cost.
  • 01:05 We're going to choose cost and set each one of these to a cost type resource.
  • 01:12 Notice that their hourly rate is no longer here, because now we're going to just
  • 01:18 enter a cost rather than some number of hours and letting Project calculate that.
  • 01:23 Now we need to add these costs to our project.
  • 01:26 So click the Task tab and choose Gantt Chart.
  • 01:31 Under acquire land, we want to add this resource.
  • 01:35 So we use our split view, just like we did before.
  • 01:38 By going to the View tab, and choosing Details, or
  • 01:43 remember we can drag the view up from the bottom.
  • 01:47 Now right now I'm looking at a cost style view, but you may not be.
  • 01:54 So just right click on a gray area, anywhere, over here to the right and
  • 02:00 then choose Cost and now you'll get the cost form.
  • 02:04 What we'll do is add a resource.
  • 02:06 In this case, I'll add cost, acquire land and create a cost for that.
  • 02:13 And that will be $150,000.
  • 02:18 On the build house, we actually need to create a task,
  • 02:21 because there is no task that says acquire materials or purchase materials.
  • 02:26 So we'll go ahead and insert a task.
  • 02:30 And say purchase house materials.
  • 02:36 We'll make this one day,
  • 02:37 you could actually spread this out across the project.
  • 02:41 You could incorporate budget resources into each one of these tasks.
  • 02:45 But right now what I'm doing is just showing you a very simple straightforward
  • 02:49 way of at least getting the cost into your project and tied to the timeline.
  • 02:53 So let's go ahead and add a resource for this.
  • 03:01 And that will be $250,000.
  • 03:07 So now the other important thing here is that this task is not linked.
  • 03:12 So I need to make sure that this task is also in the critical path of our project.
  • 03:17 So right now this task here of excavate land is linked to acquire permits.
  • 03:23 What I'm going to do is just move purchase materials to linking
  • 03:28 to acquire permits and then link this task here to purchasing the house material.
  • 03:35 And I'll make sure that my predecessors and successor columns are all linked
  • 03:39 together and I'll use the network diagram if I need to.
  • 03:42 I'll enter the rest of the cost for my project now.
  • 03:49 Now that we have the cost defined for our project,
  • 03:52 we're going to look at the total cost for the entire project and
  • 03:56 see how using these resources affected our schedule.
  • 04:00 So first I'll close the split view.
  • 04:02 Again, I can just drag it down to the bottom, or I can double click on the line.
  • 04:06 And now, what I'm going to do is locate the view tab and the tables pick list.
  • 04:13 The table allows us to look at different columns in the same view that we're in.
  • 04:19 Right now we're in an entry view.
  • 04:21 What we're going to do is choose the Cost table and this cost table keeps us in
  • 04:26 the Gantt chart view, but changes the table of columns that are being displayed.
  • 04:32 So let's expand the total cost field.
  • 04:34 And you can see that the total cost for a project is about $800,000.
  • 04:39 And this is all calculated because we added these resources to our project.
  • 04:44 I should note that when we work with a Gantt chart, I'll go back to entry.
  • 04:51 And we're adding these tasks, right now we're just making them one day.
  • 04:55 You could get more detail oriented with this.
  • 04:59 However, the more detail you add,
  • 05:01 the more difficult it's going to be to track your project.
  • 05:04 I recommend you start by just at least putting the cost for
  • 05:07 your project at the start of a particular phase or summary.
  • 05:10 And then from there, you can start building out more detail if you need to.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

PMI, PMP, CAPM and PMBOK are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Gift this course