Merlin Project: Overtime Work
You use Merlin Project to plan your projects? Then you already know how to define activities by work, duration, or a combination of both.
What if you need to record overtime?
This is how to proceed:
Record overtime work in actuals
Lets say you planned an activity of 8 hours work on which your resource actually needed 10.5 hours. To avoid getting behind with successor activities, all work was performed in one day and those 2.5 hours were overtime work.
- Select your activity.
- Open the ,Actual Values' inspector.
- Enter first the ,Actual Start' date with time.
- Enter the ,Actual End' date with time.
- Adjust the automatic value of ,Actual Work' and set it to ,10.5 hours'.
- Expand the ,Actual Work' group and enter ,2.5 hours' in ,Actual Work Overtime'.
Schedule overtime work
Lets say you plan an activity of 10.5 hours work. When having a working calendar of 8 hours per day, you will need 1.31 days to accomplish this activity. To avoid getting behind with successor activities, all work needs to get performed in one day. That means, 2.5 hours of overtime work.
- Select your activity.
- Use the ,Plan' inspector.
- Enter ,10.5 hours' in the ,Work' field.
- Expand the ,Work' group and enter ,2.5 hours' in ,Overtime Work'
Note: ,Expected Duration' is now only 8 hours. Overtime work takes place at times outside the project's working times, therefor only the remaining work of 8 hours (= 10.5 - 2.5) will show up in the Gantt.
Overtime costs
- Use the ,Resource: Costs' inspector to define Standard and Overtime rates
- Select an activity with ,Actual Work Overtime' or ,Overtime Work'.
- To see costs:
- Use the ,Finance' inspector and its ,Balance' tab.
- Or switch to a view offering cost information, i.e. ,Work breakdown > Plan/Actual Comparison (Cost)'.
- Or enable any cost related columns as required.
Planned, Expected and Actual Costs calculate values according to the defined Standard and Overtime rates and the amounts of planned, actual and overtime work.
Throughout a project's life, you might need to deal with overtime work. Merlin Project gives you the tools to correctly document overtime work and manage its consequences in terms of scheduling and costs.