Forum Discussion
Weekly Hire Charges in Microsoft Project
MSProjectNovice,
Yeah that's a bit tricky but there are ways to do it. Unfortunately Project doesn't have a day or week or month rate, all work resource costs are actually accrued by the minute regardless of how the Standard Rate is entered on the Resource Sheet. The longer they are assigned, the more they cost.
To get a true day rate (or week rate) requires some VBA code. As it turns out I wrote a VBA macro to calculate a true day rate for resources, it could be modified to calculate a true week rate. For reference you can see that macro at:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/32067.ms-project-true-day-rate-for-resources.aspx
However, for your cement mixer example, it's cost could be handled in other ways. Let's say you estimate needing the cement mixer for a week and a half. The mixer rents by the week so whether it's one week and one day or the full two weeks, you'll be charged for two weeks. If the period of use is broken down into weekly increments, you can use the Cost per Use field on the Resource Sheet. In this example the usage is broken down into weekly increments, one full week and one partial week, with the cement mixer assigned at 100% to each period. Because the resource has a cost/use of $100, each "use" accrues a $100 charge. Note the Standard rate for the resource is zero which will keep the cost independent of time.
In this next example, the cement mixer is created as a Cost type resource which allows you to assign the resource with any cost to any task, again, independent of period of use. Here 3 slab pours are sharing the cement mixer over a one week period. Assume the cement mixer rental is $100 per week. For convenience the rental cost is spread equally over the three pour tasks although the rental cost could be shown against the first pour with the resource assigned at zero dollars to the other two pours. Note, for a cost type resource, there is no Standard Rate or Cost/Use, the cost is entered into the Cost field on the Assign Resources window.
Now let's say the third slab pour spills into a second week. In this case I've increased the period of performance (duration) for the third slab pour and added an extra week's worth of rental to that task, since that task triggered the added week's rental.
Hope this gives you some ideas.
John