Planned Work
The Planned Work feature lets you keep your project plan fixed, no matter how much actual time is tracked. This helps you compare planned vs. actual time and improve future planning. Planned Work also lets you plan your projects with forward or backward scheduling. For more information, see Project Scheduling Methods.
To enable the Planned Work feature, go to Setup > Company > Enable Features. Under Projects, check the Planned Work box, and click Save.
When you enable Planned Work, NetSuite recalculates all open projects and their plans. Make sure any finished projects are set to Closed first, or you might see changes to percent complete, billing, or revenue recognition.
When you enable Planned Work, the Estimated Work field becomes Calculated Work, and a Planned Work field is added to project and task records. If you enter planned work on tasks, the total rolls up to the Planned Work field on the project record.
If time is tracked outside the planned work, the Planned Work field doesn’t change. It only updates if you manually enter hours against the project or task. Calculated Work is the sum of planned work and any extra time tracked outside of planned work. As you track time outside the plan, Calculated Work updates.
With Planned Work, planned time entries stay as planned time, they're not converted to actual time entries. If you use Advanced Project Profitability, this could double-count your committed costs. Make sure your custom profitability settings don’t have Planned Time enabled on the Settings page. For more information, see Advanced Project Profitability.
If you create Forecast Charges for Actual Time Entries without enabling the Planned Work feature, you won't be able to perform this functionality when the feature is enabled.
There’s a 250 entry limit for any single assignment. Since planned time entries aren’t converted with Planned Work, big projects might hit this limit. If that happens, the plan won’t recalculate and can't be edited. To fix it, clear the Create Planned Time Entries box or make each time entry longer to avoid lots of small entries.
If you had saved searches or reports using Estimated Work, you’ll need to update them to include the Calculated Work field. Calculated Work and Planned Work are both available for searches and reports, so you can track your planning accuracy.
After enabling Planned Work, go to Setup > Accounting > Accounting Preferences. On the Projects tab, under Project Management, in the Percent Complete Denominator field, select how you want your denominator determined for percent complete calculations.
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Planned Time – the total number of hours for planned for the project
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Planned Time +Actual Time – the total number of hours planned for the project plus any time tracked over the planned hours
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Allocated Time – if you use resource allocations, the total number of hours allocated for the project
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Allocated Time +Actual Time – if you use resource allocations, the total number of hours allocated for the project plus any time tracked over the allocated hours
After you've initially set this preference, any changes made will require recalculation of your open project plans. This could affect your calculated percent complete, progress, revenue recognition, or charge-based billing. If you select allocated time, NetSuite uses all allocated time (project and task) for percent complete calculations.