Historical Expenses Import Notes

For comparison to planned cost and billing amounts for expenses, consultants, and units (survey crews or lab tests, for example), you can import the actual amounts that you have charged to projects.

DPS uses the historical expense amounts to provide comparisons of planned amounts to actual amounts, and to calculate JTD and estimate-at-completion (EAC) values.

If you import a transaction, and no plan assignment exists for the account (or account and vendor combination) for the WBS element to which the transaction is charged, the import creates a new assignment.

Each time you import historical transactions, the JTD date on the Planning Settings form (Settings > Resource Planning > Plan Settings) is automatically updated to the latest historical transaction date in the DPS database.

Recommendation: If you use more than one of the historical data imports (Historical Labor, Historical Expenses, Historical Overhead), it is recommended that you run all of those import processes on the same schedule and that the import files all include transactions from the same transaction date range.

Import Availability

This import is available if both of the following are true for your enterprise:
  • Accounting is not activated.
  • Resource Planning is activated.

Preparation

Before you import historical expenses the first time, set up your chart of accounts using the Accounts form (Settings > Accounting > Chart of Accounts).

In addition, it is recommended that you also use the firms import process to import the vendors that you want to associate with expenses, consultants, and units.

Required Fields

To import historical expenses, you must include the following in each import record:
  • Valid reimbursable or direct expense account number, mapped to the DPS Account Number field
  • Valid full WBS element ID, mapped to the DPS Project ID field
  • Valid transaction type (AP (accounts payable), CV (cash disbursements), or UN (units)), mapped to the DPS Transaction Type field
  • Date associated with the transaction, mapped to the DPS Transaction Date field
  • Cost and/or billing amount, mapped to the DPS Cost Amount field or Billing Amount field

The WBS element ID should be the full element ID that includes the IDs for higher-level elements. Use the delimiter character specified on the Plan Settings form (Settings > Resource Planning > Plan Settings) to separate the levels in the full element ID. For example, if project 01 has a phase 002, the WBS element ID for that phase in a historical expense record in the import file should be 01.002, not just 002. In addition, the WBS element must be at the lowest level of its branch of the WBS; you can only enter planned amounts for the lowest-level elements. If this field is blank or the ID does not exist or it is not at the lowest level, the record is not imported, and an error message displays.

Vendor Validation

You are not required to provide a vendor when you import a transaction. If you want to want to specify a vendor for a transaction, include the vendor name in the import file and map it to the Vendor Name field.

If you specify a vendor name, the import process checks for an existing vendor with that name. If none exists, you are given the option to add the vendor and associate it with the transaction. If the vendor already exists, it is automatically associated with the transaction. It is important to always spell a vendor name exactly the same in all import files so that you do not mistakenly create duplicate vendors in DPS.

You can also specify a vendor number and map that to the Vendor Number field. If you do that and the vendor does not already exist in DPS, that vendor number is used for the new vendor record. If you do not specify a vendor number for a new vendor, DPS assigns a vendor number for you based on the vendor name.

Multiple Currencies

If your company is set up to use multiple currencies in DPS, this import supports importing cost and billing amounts in different currencies. If the project (cost) currency for a project is different from its billing currency, the cost amounts and billing amounts in the import file for that project should each be in the corresponding currency.

Updating Existing Records

Unlike most other DPS import processes, you cannot use this import process to update historical transactions that were previously imported. All historical transactions that you import are treated as new records.

Plan Publication Status

You can import historical expenses for a plan regardless of whether it is currently marked as published or unpublished.

Parent Topic: Individual Imports