Glossary

 

Glossary

 

TermDefinition
Pass-through costA cost card for which the disbursed and client amounts match. Basically, the client reimbursed the exact amount you outlayed. See Expense Type Editor.

Adjustment Code

Predefined codes that describe a reason for a write up/down of a card.

Assigned Resource

Someone who falls into the following categories

  • -Is the preferred resource on a requested role and there are no bookings
  • -Is the resource on a booked role

Comes into play when you have the general permission Limit Access set.

Actual Billed HoursActual person hours, on an issued invoice

Available Hours

Hours that a resource is available.

Actual Unbilled HoursActual person hours, not on an issued invoice

Billing Adjusted Revenue

Revenue earned after all adjustments have been made. For example pre-invoicing or invoicing adjustments.

Billing Cycle

Determine when clients are invoiced. For example monthly or quarterly. In Projector a billing cycle is assigned to a client or engagement, then in invoice creation a billing cycle value can be used as a filter to find only those clients or engagements in that cycle with unbilled items.

Billing DaysDays to be charged to the client at completion

Busy Hours

Hours for a 'busy' engagement. Whether an engagement counts toward busy is  a property of the engagement types form.

Capacity Management

A measurement of an organization's capacity and how much of that capacity is being used. An employee who only works 30 hours of a 40 hour work week is at 75% capacity. This number is useful for scheduler's because it can be used to forecast staffing needs. This setting is affected by RDC Basis Hours.

Card

Describes an amount of money covered by a period of time worked or an expense incurred, respectively called Time Card or Cost Card

Chargeable

If an expense will be charged to a client

Chargeable HoursHours whose Billing Adjusted Revenue is positive.

Client Amount

The amount charged to a client for an expense. Expenses can be written up or written down, so they will not necessarily match the disbursed expense amount.

Contract Revenue

Revenue earned based on the contract rates established for an engagement. When compared against Standard Revenue you can identify differences caused by the sales process.

Cost Card

A single expense

Cost Center

A model of an organization's structure, for instance the structure could be geographical or division based. Engagements belong to a single cost center

Cost WIP

Approved, unbilled expenses

Credit Memo

A credit on an invoice

Day Fraction

Fraction of a day to be charged to the client.

Hours on a time card divided by the project's Day Length (measured in hours) is the starting value (Day Fraction can be overridden). Day Fraction is a positive number. It isn't generally larger than 1, but it could be.

Referred to as "Billing Days" in field names, although it is based on Hours rather than Chargeable Hours.

Delegated Authentication

Allows Projector to authenticate users based on a third party server.

Disbursed Amount

The out of pocket amount for any expense.

Full Time Equivalent (FTE)

An FTE is the number of people required to deliver X hours for location Y. That location's holiday schedule is taken into account in these calculations. For example, it takes 1 FTE to deliver 32 hours in a week with a holiday. Also 1 FTE to deliver 40 hours in a week with no holidays.

Holiday

Predetermined list of Holidays, different than Time-off like Vacation or personal Days (e.g Independence Day, Labor Day). Resources do not need to enter time on holidays. For schedulers, the holiday schedule lets them know when resources are out-of-office.

HoursTime reported on a time card. Stored in Projector as minutes.

Engagements

Engagements fit into an organization's business logic through contracts. An engagement will represent a single contract. This contract may have one or more deliverables. These deliverables can be broken down by project. Projects roll up into the engagement to determine its status

Engagement Manager

 The manager for an engagement. ‘Stage Settings’ determine the permissions of an engagement manager.

Expense Amount

The amount of an expense report that is born by the company. For example, if a resource spends ten dollars and eight dollars are paid by the client, the expense that the company is responsible for is two dollars.

Expense Report

Out of pocket costs that must be reimbursed to an employee. These may be paid by the company or changed to a client.

Fixed Price (FP)

An engagement that will be completed according to a predetermined price (contract amount), always invoiced with milestones.

Invoice

An itemized bill. Invoice number can be set to Hybrid or Automatic. Hybrid autonumbers invoices, but allows a manual override. Automatic will always choose the invoice number.

Management Portal

The desktop application used for managing an installation of ProjectorPSA.

Milestones

These are set per Engagement on the Contract subtab. A milestone represents a point at which an Engagement has reached a goal. You can set a planned ate for the milestone and also record the date it was achieved. Invoices can then reference these milestones. Milestones are not attached to Projects. What is business logic of milestones in regards to Projector?

Non-Billable Time Card

Time entered against a non-billable project. Time that has been written down to zero against a billable project is not considered non-billable. 

Normal Working Hours

The number of hours a resource typically works. Also see Working Hours.

Net Available Hours

Available Hours - Overallocated Hours, OR

Working Hours - Other Scheduled Hours - Role Hours (requested or scheduled)

Not to Exceed (NTE)

An engagement that will be billed on a Time and Materials (TM) basis, but capped at a certain amount.

Other Direct Cost (ODC)

Expenses, Vendor Invoices or Soft Costs incurred by the company

ODC Base Amount

Incurred Base Amount from Cost Cards. This is disbursed amount on costs less VAT.

Always, for ODC:
Base + Revenue = Client + Expense

ODC Client

An ODC charged to a client. For example a $25 meal is billed to the client. The ODC Client amount is $25.

ODC Expense

An ODC incurred by the company. For example $100 is spent on a car rental, but not charged to a client. The ODC Expense is $100.

ODC Revenue

An ODC that generates revenue. For example a client is charged $200 for a $150 plane ticket. The ODC revenue is $50.

Overallocated HoursOther Scheduled Hours - Working Hours + Role Hours (requested or scheduled, never negative)
Pass-through costA cost card for which the disbursed and client amounts match. Basically, the client reimbursed the exact amount you outlayed. See Expense Type Editor.

Payment Voucher

Payment Vouchers are the vehicle by which Projector reimburses resources or pays vendors.

Person Hours

The number of reported hours for a resource. This includes all reported hours, billable, non-billable, time off and paid holiday.

Pre-Invoicing Adjustment

Project/Finance Managers can use the pre-invoicing adjustments to review approved time and costs against the project and (with proper permissions) revalue, write up or down, transfer to another project or transfer to another role those time or cost cards prior to creating invoices.

Primary Cost MetricMost relevant metric on the project's cost budget at completion
Projected HoursProjected person hours, based on projections

Projects

Subsections of engagements.

Project Manager

The manager of a project. Through a combination of stage permissions and installation settings PMs can request or schedule people to work on the project, create project plans, invoice for projects, set billing rates, and create budgets. How much or little a PM can do depends on your organization and its business needs.

Projector Web

The web based portion of Projector accessed at app.projectorpsa.com

Purchase Order

Can be assigned while setting up CLIs. You can then use the invoicing scope to make invoices at a PO level.

Reconciliation

A means by which a vendor can be paid in full before all cost cards are submitted and approved. A good example is a credit card. When the credit card bill arrives, all cost cards may not have been submitted, but you want to pay the bill in full. So you create a reconciliation item for the missing amount(s). When the cost cards come through you add them and remove the reconciliation items.

Resource

A person whose time, expenses or schedule can be managed in Projector. If you are a resource you are also a user.

Resource Direct Cost (RDC)

The internal cost of an employee. To calculate revenue it is necessary to know how much salary + benefits you are paying per person.

RDC Basis Hours

Which hours are used for RDC. = Normal working hours || = Normal working hours - holidays || = Normal working hours - holidays - time off.

Resource Direct Rate

The per-hour cost of a resource. = RDC / Utilization Basis hours

Revenue Recognition

Pace the rate of recognized or earned revenue based on how much of the project has actually been completed. Typically used on FP or NTE projects.

Role

A role represents demand for labor. This demand is then supplied by a resource assigned to the role. For example, project X needs a social media director which will be staffed by Henry. Roles are booked hours so that the resource and you know who is working on what and when.

Soft Cost

All costs not covered by an Expense Report or a Vendor Invoice. For example management fees which are pure revenue.

Stages

Describe the business flow of an engagement. For example Proposal, Delivery and Closeout. Project permissions can be set based upon which stage the engagement is on.

Standard Rate

Billing rate based on resource cost center

Standard Revenue

Revenue that would be generated if engagement is billed at the standard rate

Task HoursHours planned for a Project Task

System Revenue

Actual or projected revenue after billing and revenue adjustments. System revenue is recognized on an ongoing basis for T&M projects while recognized by Revenue Recognition on FP projects.

Time and Materials (TM)

An engagement that will be billed on a time and materials basis.

Time Card

A single amount of time entered against a project

Time Off

= paid + unpaid time off

Time WIP

Projector control account that represents the value of labor that has been expended on behalf of a client, but for which the client has not yet been billed. Only Projector should be allowed to modify the balances in this account.

Total BillingsBilling Adjusted Revenue plus ODC Client Amount, independent of cutoff date | = Billing Adjusted Revenue + ODC Client Amount

Total Revenue

The sum of both System and ODC revenue.

Treat Costs as Fees

Recognize all of an ODC as revenue. For example you resell a $200 software license for $500. All $500 is recognized as revenue instead of the difference of $300.

Unnamed Role

An unnamed role has not yet had someone assigned to it. It is a placeholder until such a time that an allocation can be made.

User

A person who logs into Projector.

User Defined Field (UDF)

A custom attribute that can be assigned to engagements, projects and resources. Useful for reports and dashboard views.

Utilization Basis Hours

Determined by RDC Basis.

Vendor

Needs a better definition. Are paid by vendor invoices.

Vendor Invoice

A hard payable to an external party for goods or services.

Working HoursNormal Working Hours - Holiday Hours - PTO Hours (never negative)