Forum Discussion
Project schedule
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%
- I'm sorry. I just can't devote the time that it would take to wrap my mind around this. As I said in an earlier message, it would be different if we were sitting down in the same room, face to face, but we're not.
You might want to try posting again, a fresh message BUT, if I may offer advice, be far more complete in describing the whole picture, what you need to be able to do, the context into which it all fits, etc. As I've tried to say, though, it seems--what I've been able to glean--to be unnecessarily convoluted, like you're moving numbers around not to reflect reality, but to make them fit some pre-determined limits..... That's how it has looked. It may be legitimate, but it just hasn't made sense to me and that's been my frustration. mathetes Sorry I didn't make this clear up front. I have attached a spreadsheet that I hope helps. The first tab is a mock travel schedule similar to the one that I actually use. There you will see a list of the Employees, the Category that they are traveling under, the dates of travel and a crude calculation of the numbers of hours for that length of travel (would like it to exclude holidays/weekends, and other PTO).
The Labor tab then shows a pivot of the total hours and when they are occurring. Then the table to the left (I'm using Angela as an example), I've entered in her 2 hours for Mar and Jun, and then calculated the remaining hours that are needed for the remaining months and manually entered them into the table. I am looking to automate the table based on the number of hours from the travel schedule. Hope this is clearer. Please advise.
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.