Hi Project guys,

How to enter Advance Cash money paid to contractor in Cost-Timeline View,
Note- there are 2 types of payment :
1 Advance money, say 10 % of Total Contract amount - paid prior of start date,
2 Retention Amount, say 5% of Total contract amount  -paid  2 month after Finish Date of scheduled task/activity,

Project Pro File is not allowing to enter this advance amount-because Start Date of Activity/Task in Schedule is ahead 1 month,

Screen-1-Cash out excel data (source)

Screen-2:Because Schedule start date of Activity is October15 ,
While September15 - I am paying 10 %  Advance money to contractor

Screen-3 : IF I Put Baseline Cost- and put advance money-Then also report is not showing any sense?

Any Idea please ?

• Edited by mafab Monday, August 17, 2015 3:33 AM comments added
• Merged by Guillaume Rouyre [MBA, MVP, P-Seller]MVP, Moderator Monday, August 17, 2015 7:23 AM duplicated

Hi Mafab,

First of all I merged your questions since most of the forum moderators are replying on all Project forums.

Then you definitely can add cost ahead or after the task start/finish dates. It will just adjust the start and finish dates but the task duration and work will be kept. For that, you can use the task usage view, adding a cost resource to the task and manually enter the cost. In the following example, I have a task running in december, but I added a cost in august:

That being said, a better way would be to create 2 cost resources (advanced cost and retention cost), a milestone before the task start date and another after the task finish date, eventually adding lag to the links, and enter a cost on those milestones using the task cost, cost panel.

Which gives the following timephased cost in the task usage:

Hi GR,
I am checking your solution on my scenario- will posted you once find it working sooner

Hi,
In MS Project Pro 2013 ( PS 2013 Env)
What is methodology for Cost advance/Cost retention for an activity ?

Say -If I wanted to give 10 % advance cash before start date of activity and I will give 5 % cash after the finish date of activity - in simple language- project pro will allow to enter values in scheduled-start/Finish date range, not before/nor later ?

Or should I directly suggest for go to Primavera where all is possible ?

• Edited by mafab 2 hours 26 minutes ago

Hello GR,
1st  is solved -I can set the Advance Cost on same Activity, because the advance payment happens(say x %) at the exact start date of activity (no need of lead/lag)  ...

2nd- Retention cost - client is not ready to create another/separate activity for retention cost (he needed in same activity),  because he wanted to share/export/import with guys few of them uses Primavera -wherein Primavera has resource level option for lag/lead, with that they maintain retention cost on same task line,
I told -in MS Project - lead/lag is not present at resource level,

Now what ?- pls suggest :(

• Edited by mafab 2 hours 18 minutes ago description made clear

Hi Mafab,

I see no issue assigning a cost resource (retention cost) 2 months after the task ends. Here is an example on a 25 days task, I assign a work resource and a cost resource (retention). I have then a cost of 18,000$ since my rate is 90$/hr. For the moment, the cost resource is assigned but there is no cost on it.

Then I switch to the task usage. Still no retention cost but only 18,000$ spread on the 25 days long task.

Now I can simply manually add a cost on the retention cost resource 2 months after the task, meaning in december. The task cost is updated to 19,800$. Note also that the task duration is still 25 days.

Note that the task duration is 25 days evenif the task finish date is 31 dec. It makes sense that Project keeps the duration of the task but updates the finish date since we can consider that the activity will not be closed before all costs are done. Note also that the project duration is 88 days.