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.
- General
- Regularly Import Actual Time Worked
- Actual Time Worked and the Booking Date
- Where to View Actual Time Worked Data
- Actual Time Worked in a Project's Details
- Actual Time Worked in the Project List
- Key Figures for Actuals - Time Worked
- How to Enter the Approved Total Effort
General
In the Detailed Project and Program Rights section of your user group, you need to have at least the Read Only option under Access Actual Time Worked enabled.
Regularly Import Actual Time Worked
To see the comparison between the Planned Allocations and the Actual Time Worked, you need to import your Actual Time Worked into Meisterplan first. 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.
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 importing at least 15 minutes of Actual Time Worked per project.
Actual Time Worked and the Booking Date
You have the choice to import the Actual Time Worked of a project and resource or role in intervals (for example, per day, per week, etc.) or import it all at once. In Meisterplan, all imported 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.
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.
Where to View Actual Time Worked Data
Meisterplan allows you to compare Actual Time Worked, Estimate at Completion and other related figures in different views:
- Use the Project Details to view Actual Time Worked data per project in the Allocation Tracker, and view the same data per role and resource in the project team section. Learn more below.
- In the Project List, you can configure Actual Time Worked and other figures as columns and compare the data over several projects. Learn more below.
- When configuring the project cards in the Board view, you can select two project details from this list to be displayed on each card.
- 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, that means 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
For a comprehensive and detailed overview of Planned Allocations, Actual Time Worked and Approved Total Effort, configure your project settings to include the Project Team section and the Allocation Tracker. Your Actuals data will be displayed in different contexts, per project or per role/resource, as a comparison of the past or an estimate of the future effort, depending on the data available.
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 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 Allocation Total.
- If no Approved Total Effort has been added to a project, you can use it to compare the Allocation Total with the 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.
Project Team
If you have configured the Project Team 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 Total, the Estimate at Completion consists of Actual Time Worked and Remaining Allocations per resource or role.
- If the project has only Planned Allocations Total but no Actual Time Worked, the Estimate at Completion consists of Past Allocations and Remaining Allocations per resource or role.
- If the project has only Actual Time Worked but no Planned Allocations Total, the Estimate at Completion consists of Actual Time Worked per resource or role.
- Without either Actual Time Worked or Planned Allocations Total, 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 EAC from Approved Total Effort: the difference between the 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
- 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 Remaining Allocations from Today.
- 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 Allocation Total: 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
- Remaining Allocations from Today: 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 EAC from Planned Allocation Total: the difference between the Estimate at Completion and the Allocation Total, with a positive number indicating that the EAC is higher than the Allocation Total
- Deviation of Planned Allocations Total from Approved Total Effort: the difference between the Planned Allocations Total and the Approved Total Effort displayed in time unit or percent, with a positive number indicating that the Planned Allocations Total is higher than the Approved Total Effort
- Past Allocations: allocations for this project in Meisterplan from the start of the project until today
How to Enter the Approved Total Effort
Set the Approved Total Effort per project to compare it with Planned Allocations or the Estimate at Completion.
Required User Rights
To access the Approved Total Effort field, you need to be in a user group with the following rights:
- Under Project Field Rights, you need to have at least Read Only rights to view the field in a project’s details (as project field and in the Allocation Tracker) and the Project List.
- Under Project Field Rights, you need to have edit rights to edit the field in a project’s details.
- Under Administrative Rights, you need to have the Manage Project Fields, Project Settings, Project Overview and Advanced right to add the field to the project details.
Set the Approved Effort Per Project
Approved Total Effort is a project field that must be added to the project details to view and edit it. In the left Sidebar, click Manage and open the Project Settings. Next, in a custom section click Add Project Field and select Approved Total Effort.
Enter the approved effort manually per project or import the approved effort for several projects with the Quick Import for Projects.
You can only set the Approved Total Effort in hours or days.
Compare the Approved Effort with Other Figures
Once you have entered the Approved Total Effort for a project, you can view it in different places in Meisterplan and compare it with other figures.
- In the Allocation Tracker in the project details, the Approved Total Effort is compared to the Estimate at Completion or to the Allocation total.
- In the Project List, you can add the Approved Total Effort as a column and configure other columns next to it for comparison.