As an Engineer-to-Order (ETO) business, our projects can last from between six to eighteen months; when we create a budget for a job, we know what tasks need to be carried out and the skill or trade required to undertake it, what we don't know is which specific employee or sub-contractor may actually undertake the work.
We have considered creating 'generic' resources for skills and trades, such as Architect, Quantity Surveyor or Cladding Engineer, which we use when creating the budget for the job. During our testing, this has worked well to a point. However, when the timesheet for the employee who carried out the specific task is posted to the job, the actual costs are fine, but the 'generic' budgeted hours remain unchanged.
My understanding is that the quantity field on a job planning line will only reduce if the timesheet entry matches the job number, task number and resource id of the job planning line. Can you confirm that this is the case? If this is the case, can you allocate a specific timesheet entry to a job planning line but with a different resource?
We could change the resource allocated to the job planning line when we know who may undertake the task, but it is not unusual for various factors to conspire so that someone else does the work, such as illness or weather conditions. Also, this would add extra work on our project administrators.
Has anyone else had a similar issue? I would be very interested to know how you solved your problem.
Thank you in advance for your help.