Forum Discussion
Project Changing % Complete when entered
Thank you for responding. To address your questions, we do have nonworking days. We have about 6 non-working days throughout the year plus the week between Christmas and New Year's is scheduled as non-working. I'm fairly new to this schedule, but I can see the task shows a Baseline Duration of 200 working days from 9/30/25 to 10/1/26. The Actual Start is 11/12/25 although there is 0% progress.
The task type is fixed duration, auto-scheduled, it is only loaded with a Materials resource, and I'm pretty confident no one has updated the Remaining Duration or Actual Work, as the typical practice here is to update the % complete then "Update Project - Reschedule incomplete work to start on the status date."
I believe the best practice is to update Remaining Duration and let Project calculate the % complete, but for this task, even when I enter a value in Remaining Duration, the % Complete value stays at 0. I want to advise the team on the correct way to update progress to reflect their estimated FInish Date (based on Remaining Duration) and % Complete, but updating one of these fields isn't producing the expected result in the other field.
Brett_Phifer_SCI,
When it comes to statusing tasks in Project, one size doesn't fit all.
For a work resource, unless waiting for a wound to heal, actual duration accomplishes nothing. For a work resource, progress is work and actual work. Remaining work is adjusted as necessary.
For a material resource actual duration does have meaning. For example if the resource is fuel and the material label is gal/day then the number of days (duration) is the metric for consumption. A cost per use may also factor into a material resource.
A fixed duration type task for a material resource might be applicable but generally not. A material resource is consumed over whatever span of time it is needed/used, generally in conjunction with a work type resource (i.e. backhoe using fuel).
John