Compare Planned Allocations, Approved Total Effort and Actual Time Worked on your projects to quickly determine when a project is off track. Adapt your plan as early as possible to ensure you deliver the best outcomes.
- Required User Rights
- Entering Actual Time Worked in Meisterplan
- Where to View and Compare Actual Time Worked Data
- Key Figures for Actuals - Time Worked
Required User Rights
To view actual time worked, your user group must have at least the Read Only option enabled under Access Actual Time Worked in the Detailed Project and Program Rights section.
To edit actual time worked, you need to have the option Edit enabled.
To import actual time worked using the quick import, you need to have the Import Data right enabled under Integration Rights.
Entering Actual Time Worked in Meisterplan
To see the comparison between the Planned Allocations and the Actual Time Worked, you need to input your Actual Time Worked into Meisterplan. Import Actual Time Worked data regularly so you always stay up to date with your project progress. To ensure that the bars in the Allocation Tracker are displayed correctly, we recommend inputting at least 15 minutes of Actual Time Worked per project.
Actual Time Worked serves as the basis to calculating the actual allocation costs, which, among other things, allows you to make a planned vs. actual comparison of your project costs. You can find all the relevant details in the article Approved Budget and Actual Costs.
Please note: actuals that are imported or entered for the future can lead to calculation errors.
With a Quick Import
In the left sidebar, under Import & Export you can simply and quickly import actual time worked for different projects, roles or resources. All you need is a spreadsheet with the Actual Time Worked entries from your time-tracking tool. Find out more in the Quick Import for Actual Time Worked.
To delete the Actual Time Worked of a booking date, simply import the respective booking date with 0 hours. Learn more about this in the Updating Imported Actual Time Worked section of the Quick Import for Actual Time Worked article. Booking dates cannot be deleted.
Manually
You can also manually enter or edit actual time worked directly in Meisterplan. This is helpful when entering in your own actual time worked, or the actual time worked for one of your projects.
Manually entered actual time worked will be taken into account in analyses; however, it will not have a booking date. This means that the last booking date used in an import will be used.
Manually Entering CapEx/OpEx
Manually entered or edited actual time worked will always be saved with the cost type of the project, even if what it was originally imported with was a different cost type.
Manually Entering Your Own Actual Time Worked
Team members can enter and edit their own actual time worked in hours in the view My Schedule:
To do this, the resource must be linked to the user, and the user right Team Members Can View and Edit Their Own Actual Time Worked must be enabled. Learn more in the article My Schedule (View).
Manually Entering the Actual Time Worked for a Project
In the Project Details, in the Tab Allocations > Actual Time Worked, you can enter and edit the actual time worked for said project.
Learn more in the article Project Details View (Allocations Tab).
Booking Date and Distribution of Actuals Over Time
When importing Actual Time Worked (whether per day, per week, or all at once), all Actual Time Worked entries, both existing and new ones, will be summed up per project until the last booking date and displayed as a sum.
In the My Schedule view, imported Actual Time Worked is distributed over the working days of each week. This is based on the resource's calendar, so that days like holidays or vacation are ignored.
Where to View and Compare Actual Time Worked Data
Meisterplan allows you to view and compare Actual Time Worked, Allocations Estimate at Completion and other related figures in different views:
- In the Project Details, you can view actual time worked data and compare it with planned allocations or approved total effort (Learn more below):
- In the Allocations Tab under Actual Time Worked, you can view, add and edit your team's actual time worked. You can also compare actual time worked with planned allocations under Allocations or Actual Time Worked.
- In the Allocation Tracker, you can view a project's summed actual time worked and compare it to the approved total effort and planned allocations.
- In the Roles and Resources - Allocations section, you can see a project's actual time worked summed per role and resource, and you can see a comparison with the estimate at completion and the planned allocations.
- In the Project List, you can configure Actual Time Worked and other figures as columns and compare the data between several projects. Learn more below.
- When configuring the project cards in the Board view, you can select four project details to be displayed on each card, including actual time worked data from this list.
- In integrated reports, you can configure and analyze actual time worked and derived figures such as the deviation between plan and actuals.
- The Reporting API lets you export Actual Time Worked to external BI tools to include them in your reports.
Actual Time Worked is not scenario-specific but global, which means that it can be viewed or imported in every scenario that contains the respective project.
The selected date range has no impact on the Actual Time Worked data displayed.
Actual Time Worked in a Project's Details
In the Project Details, you can find both detailed overviews of actual time worked and evaluations at project level. Depending on your needs, you can configure custom tabs to display the information that you want to see.
Allocations Tab
In the Allocations Tab, under Actual Time Worked, you can view a list with all of the resources and roles who have been allocated to the project, as well as those who have had actual time worked imported for them via the quick important. Here, you can add and edit actual time worked, and compare it with planned allocations:
By clicking on the three dots after the role or resource's name, you can deleted them from the project, including their allocations. Imported actual time worked will, however, remain on the project.
Learn more in the article Project Details View (Allocations Tab).
Allocation Tracker
You can find two tabs in the Allocation Tracker, Plan vs. Actual and Estimate at Completion:
Depending on which figures have been added to a project, the Estimate at Completion tab displays the following information:
- If the Actual Time Worked and the Approved Total Effort have been added to a project, you can use it to compare the Allocation Estimate at Completion with the Approved Total Effort.
- If no Actual Time Worked has been added to a project, you can use it to compare the Approved Total Effort with the Planned Allocations.
- If no Approved Total Effort has been added to a project, you can use it to compare the Planned Allocations with the Allocation Estimate at Completion.
The Plan vs. Actual tab displays a comparison between the Actual Time Worked added up for this project and the Planned Allocations until the last booking date of the imported Actual Time Worked. If no Actual Time Worked has been imported for a project, this tab does not contain any figures.
Roles and Resources - Allocations
If you have configured the Roles and Resources - Allocations section in your project details, you will also see two tabs there, Plan vs. Actual and Estimate at Completion:
Depending on which figures have been added to a project, the Estimate at Completion tab displays the following information:
- If the project has both Actual Time Worked and Planned Allocations, the Allocation Estimate at Completion consists of Actual Time Worked and Future Allocations per resource or role.
- If the project has only Planned Allocations but no Actual Time Worked, the Allocation Estimate at Completion consists of Past Allocations and Future Allocations per resource or role.
- If the project has only Actual Time Worked but no Planned Allocations, the Allocation Estimate at Completion consists of Actual Time Worked per resource or role.
- Without either Actual Time Worked or Planned Allocations, the tab does not display any figures.
The Plan vs. Actual tab displays a comparison between the Actual Time Worked and the Planned Allocations per role or resource until the last booking date of the imported Actual Time Worked. If no Actual Time Worked has been imported for a project, this tab does not contain any figures.
Actual Time Worked in the Project List
To compare Actual Time Worked or related figures of several projects, you can configure the Project List to show the columns you need:
All Actuals key figures listed below can be configured as columns.
To learn more about the Project List, see the Get a Quick Overview with the Project List article.
Key Figures for Actuals - Time Worked
All financial figures are calculated based on their raw values, and then rounded to two decimals. This may result in small deviations of the second decimal in the displayed sums.
You can view these figures in the Project Details, the Project List, the Project Overview and the Board view:
- Actual Time Worked (only Project List and Board View): number of hours imported for a project and resource or role until and including the date mentioned
- Approved Total Effort: Enter the approved effort per project. Learn more here.
- Booking Date: date to which an Actual Time Worked entry from your time-tracking tool refers; in Meisterplan, all Actual Time Worked entries for a project and a role or resource will be added up
- Deviation of Actual Time Worked from Plan: the difference between Actual Time Worked and Planned Allocations displayed in time unit or percent, with a positive number indicating that the Actual Time Worked is higher than the Planned Allocations
- Deviation of Allocation EAC from Approved Total Effort: the difference between the Allocation Estimate at Completion and the Approved Total Effort displayed in time unit or percent, with a positive number indicating that the EAC is higher than the Approved Total Effort
-
Allocation Estimate at Completion (EAC):
- If Actual Time Worked has been imported for this project, then it is the sum of Actual Time Worked + Allocations until Today and the Future Allocations.
- If no Actual Time Worked has been imported for this project, then it is the sum of all allocations for this project in Meisterplan.
- Planned Allocations: Sum of all allocations for this project in Meisterplan
- Planned Allocations until [last booking date]: sum of allocations in Meisterplan for this project until and including the date mentioned
- Future Allocations: Allocations for this project in Meisterplan from today until the end of the project
These figures you can find only in the project details:
- Actual Time Worked + Allocations until Today: all Actual Time Worked entries summed up until and including the last booking date plus planned allocations from the last booking date until today
- Actual Time Worked until [last booking date]: sum of imported Actual Time Worked for this project until and including the date mentioned
- Deviation of Allocation EAC from Planned Allocations: the difference between the Allocation Estimate at Completion and the Planned Allocations, with a positive number indicating that the Allocation EAC is higher than the Planned Allocations
- Deviation of Planned Allocations from Approved Total Effort: the difference between the Planned Allocations and the Approved Total Effort displayed in time unit or percent, with a positive number indicating that the Planned Allocations are higher than the Approved Total Effort
- Past Allocations: allocations for this project in Meisterplan from the start of the project until today