Use Effort to Calculate Cost

There is a setting in Inspire Planner that will automatically populate costs for all Project Tasks based on Effort and the assigned resource's hourly rate.

When this setting is enabled, then Inspire Planner populates the following:

• Project Task Budgeted Cost = SUM of related (Salesforce Task Planned Effort x Salesforce Task Hourly Rate)
• Project Task Actual Cost = SUM of related (Time Spent x Time Entry Hourly Rate)

The hourly rate used to calculate budgeted costs is the hourly rate on the Salesforce Task. The hourly rate on the Salesforce Task is populated with the hourly rate from the assigned resource's Project Team record when the task is assigned. When you create a project team record and leave the hourly rate blank, it will default to the hourly rate that is on the resource record.
 

When you log time for a task, Inspire Planner pulls the hourly rate from the project team record and populates the hourly rate on the time entry record. The actual cost is calculated based on the time entry hourly rate and the time spent. 
 

Please note:

• Updating the hourly rate on the resource record will not update any of the resource's project team records. This is because the hourly rate on the project team record is designed to allow you to define the resource rate specific to the project. For example, the resource rate might be different from one project to another, depending on the role they fulfill in the project.
   
• Updating the hourly rate on the project team record will update the hourly rate on the Salesforce tasks assigned to the resource for the project. This update is done by the Inspire Planner Beacon which runs every 2 minutes. You will need to wait for the Beacon to run before you see the update to the Salesforce Task hourly rate. When the Salesforce Task hourly rate is updated, then the budgeted cost will also update based on the new hourly rate.
   
• Actual Cost is calculated as Time Entry Hourly Rate x Time Spent. Where the Time Entry Hourly Rate is pulled from Project Team Hourly Rate at the time that the time entry record is created. This means that if the Project Team Hourly Rate changes during the life of the project, previous time entries will remain the same since that was the resource rate at that time. Therefore, the cost of the resource should remain unchanged. However, new time entries created after the project team hourly rate was changed will use the new rate.
   
• The instructions provided in this help article for enabling the "Use Effort to Calculate Cost" setting must be done by a Salesforce System Administrator as it requires access to Salesforce setup.

Enable "Use Effort to Calculate Cost" Setting

This section will walk you through how to enable the setting to use effort to calculate cost.

1. Click on the Gear Icon at the top right corner and go to Setup.
   
   
    
2. Enter "custom settings" in the Quick Find box and click on Custom Settings.
   
   
    
3. Click on Manage beside Inspire Planner Config.
   
   
    
4. Click on Edit.
   
   
    
5. Check the box for Use Effort to Calculate Cost and click on Save.
   
   

Reconcile Data

Once the setting is enabled, it will start to populate your Cost fields based on Effort and Hourly Rate for new entries. In order for the Cost fields to recalculate and populate for existing data, you will need to reconcile data.

1. Go to the App Launcher and enter "Inspire" in the search box. Then, go to Inspire Planner Settings.
   
   
    
2. In the section labeled "Reconcile Collaborator and Roll-up Data", click on Reconcile Data.