Recalculate Costs Overview

As your project progresses and data is modified, some activity and assignment cost values may become outdated. This may be due to regular schedule updates, changes made to related data on other pages, or other users also updating the same cost data. Some cost values are updated automatically, while other values must be updated using the Recalculate Costs service. In some situations, you may be prompted to recalculate costs before any changes are made.

Cost values might be entered directly in cost fields or by modifying other fields to which they may be connected. The application recalculates costs by checking to see if any field values that are connected to cost fields have been updated. The cost fields are then recalculated using these updated field values. Assignment costs roll up to the activity level, and activity costs are spread among the activity's assignments. Changes to a field value at the activity or assignment level may impact cost fields such as Planned, Actual, Remaining, At Completion, or Total fields.

Earned value fields rely on the current schedule and a designated earned value baseline to perform their calculations. Depending on changes made to activities or assignments in the current schedule, to the earned value baseline, or to the earned value baseline setting, you may need to run Recalculate Costs to ensure all earned value fields are up-to-date.

When you recalculate costs, you can also choose to recalculate project usage spreads as well. When this option is enabled, then running the recalculate costs calculates resource assignment and activity spreads and aggregates the spreads for the project.

Note: You must have the project-level Enable privilege for Recalculate Project Costs in the Cost Permissions category to recalculate costs.

When should I run the Recalculate Costs service?

The service should be run whenever changes are made to your project that will affect cost values in your schedule. Before recalculating, it is recommended that you schedule the project to ensure the field values used in the calculations are up-to-date.

You should recalculate costs in the following situations:

• The project's Default Price/Unit value is changed. Labor and nonlabor costs on activities without assignments will be recalculated. Milestone costs and material costs on activities without assignments are entered manually and are not dependent on the Default Price/Unit value, so they will not be recalculated.
• Scheduling or leveling the project causes a change in assignment dates. Assignments can have multiple availability periods with different Price/Unit rates. A change in assignment dates may cause them to be scheduled across different price rate periods. When scheduling or leveling your project, you can set costs to recalculate automatically after the scheduler or leveler is run.
• An Effective Start Date or Price/Unit rate is added or changed for a resource or role that is assigned to an activity. A different availability period or Price/Unit rate may cause activity costs to change.
• The earned value baseline is modified, replaced, or deleted, or if the earned value baseline setting is changed. The fields used for earned value management use the values of the earned value baseline in their calculations.
• Changes are made to resource assignment or activity fields that are used in earned value calculations. Schedule Percent Complete values are updated after scheduling, while Planned Values are updated after recalculating costs. These two fields form the basis of many earned value fields.

When are costs recalculated automatically?

Costs may be automatically recalculated at the activity or assignment level when you do any of the following:

• Edit an activity's cost, date, duration, percent complete, or unit values.
• Add or replace a resource or role assignment.
• Staff a role with a resource.
• Edit an assignment's cost, dates, duration, percent complete, units, or units/time values.
• Modify an assignment's curve value.
• Delete an assignment.

When am I prompted to recalculate costs?

If updating certain assignment values will cause a change in the assignment's costs or the activity's costs, you may be prompted to confirm your changes. You can choose to accept the changes and or cancel the changes and retain the current costs.

You will be prompted when you do any of the following:

• Change an assignment's Rate Source or Rate Type values.
• Directly modify an assignment's Price/Unit value.
• Enable an assignment's Calculate Costs from Units setting.
• Delete all labor or all nonlabor assignments from an activity. You will be prompted to retain the labor or nonlabor unit and cost values on the activity or reset them to 0.