How to make % Work Complete and Actual Work independent of each other

[BlissL]

Hi there, 

On the following link, it says the following "By default, changes to a task's percent complete value affect the actual work value. Similarly, changes to the actual work value affect the task's percent complete value. You can change this default and have percent complete and actual work independent of one another in the Project Options dialog box."

I have done the following: 

In File > Options > Schedule > Calculation options for this project >[UNTICK]: Updating Task status updates resource status 

However, when I created a test project, assigned myself a task where 

Work = 6 hours; Duration = 1 day 

Published to PWA 

Using Tasks dashboard, change Actual Work = 2 hours, and used Mark Complete to mark the task as complete. However, this changed the Actual Work to be back to the initially scheduled Work value of 6 hours. 

I want to be able to mark Actual Work as 2 hours, as we are using templates with approximate values for Work and then use the values tracked for Actual Work to refine the template values, 

Are there other options to change so that this can happen? 

[#2 · Accepted solution]

BlissL --

I think you are going down the wrong road, my friend. On the Tasks page in PWA, ask your Project Online app admin to add the Remaining Work column, if it is not already displayed. In your example, the proper process for the task with 6 hours of Work would be as follows:

1. Enter 2h in the Actual Work field
2. Set the Remaining Work field value to 0h

Project Online would then calculate the % Work Complete values as 100% for you. Also, regarding the option you changed in the Project Options dialog, I would recommend you change it back to its default setting. That setting ties the % Complete and % Work Complete values together, which I believe is a good thing.

Hope this helps.

[#3]

@Dale Howard 

Awesome, thank you so much again Dale, that does make sense.

Another related question, is there any way to auto fill in the Actual Finish date as the date the Task was marked completed?