Forum Discussion
Project schedule
I'm going to try one more time to make sense of all this.
- It sounds like what you're doing is more for budget planning purposes. Is that correct?
- If that is the case, then the way you're doing it--which from your sample just involves manually entering numbers that definitely are rough estimates--seems fine. You could consider using more accurate fractional hours (e.g., 48.6; or use 48 for five months, 49 for seven) that would get you much closer to the 1750 total.
- Do you even need monthly figures (given that in your sample spreadsheet they vary not a whit, what's the value of showing them?!!)?
- If, on the other hand, you want to report reality--i.e., have true/actual data, which you seem to wish were the case--then it could be linked to the actual employee hours, and start to actually reflect that reality. But as it is, you are just juggling numbers to come up with a pre-determined total, and if that's what you've been asked to do, the way you're already doing it is as good as any other. Why quibble the small stuff?
Again, I'm probing this because from all you've said, what you have presented us with (at least from my perspective as a former HR/Payroll database manager) first needs to be addressed from the perspective of policy and practice; only later as an Excel question. Are we reflecting reality or primarily coming up with budgeting estimates? Either is legitimate, but which is it? Keep them separate.
mathetes you are correct in that these are projections but when the time comes they are used to compare our actual expenses by, by month/ by category. Because things change so quickly the numbers do change on a monthly or even weekly basis depending so having something that can easily update number of hours would be really helpful. We do track actuals. Let me know if it can be done. Thanks.
If we were able to sit down face-to-face this would be a lot easier. I feel like you keep giving just little glimpses of what the full process is, and that is frustrating to me, perhaps in the same way that my incessant questions are frustrating to you.
For example, your latest reply makes me want to know how that monthly /weekly comparison happens and which numbers get changed and how. What you've shown--the spreadsheet you wanted help with--is SO totally homogenized--every number the same going down the column--that can't possibly reflect the reality.
So does IT get changed? How? And, for that matter, WHY? If that was just the preliminary projections for the year, why do those preliminary projections per se need to get changed. In all of my experience with budget/actual comparisons, the budget doesn't get changed itself. Variances get noted and approved or not. But you don't change the budget so that it matches the actual.
But then, as I try to look at your sheet itself, if you ARE going to revise a single number in a single column (March Sales goes from 48 to 44 was your example) does that change have to increase every other number from March (or is it April) forward, changing every other number by 4/1750? Or 4/(whatever balance of the 1750 remains)). Only the Sales numbers? Your description sounded as if every number in all columns (From April forward) was to get modified upward so as to keep the total close to 1750. But that seems (to me at any rate) so trivial as to be written off as a rounding error. More comprehensively, if ALL numbers in other columns are adjusted upward does that mean you're going to expect other people to work longer hours to compensate?
You see, I hope, that there's still quite a bit remaining to be defined, and that's after we are able to determine what it actually is that we're doing. I've been trying to see how your spreadsheet could be modified, and there those questions above are what has resulted.
And I'm afraid I've got a big meeting coming up later today and for the rest of the week--seriously--I'm retired but I'm a trustee on the board of a large national non-profit, and we have a board meeting beginning later today for which I need to finish preparing.
So maybe another person will chime in, but in the meantime, I really hope you'll take some time to reflect on and think through the process as a whole, the full process of which that presenting spreadsheet is just a small part.
mathetes right now I just need this: a spreadsheet where I can enter someone’s name, their travel dates (converted into hours minus holidays, weekends, etc) and then the remaining 1750 hours gets redistributed where Marketing and Sales gets roughly 30% of the labor, Budget and Customer Relations get 8% and HR gets 15%
As I've said, glimpse followed by glimpse followed by glimpse.
This last was the first time you've mentioned "I just need this: a spreadsheet where I can enter someone’s name, their travel dates (converted into hours minus holidays, weekends, etc) and then the remaining 1750 hours gets redistributed where Marketing and Sales gets roughly 30% of the labor, Budget and Customer Relations get 8% and HR gets 15%"
I wish you well, sincerely.
You need to provide anybody who's going to help a far more complete picture of the data you have access to. This could, in fact, be fairly simple, I suspect. Maybe not. But Excel can work with lots of raw data to summarize and report. You've been tantalizing us with only the tip of the iceberg. You describe it as the major part, and maybe it is--I don't doubt that it takes you a lot of time the way things are structured--but that spreadsheet you've shared, the one you want help on, is dependent on OTHER pieces of data, as your last post makes ever so clear.