Contents of the Overhead Allocation Form

Use the fields and options on the Overhead Allocation Form in Accounting to set up the overhead allocation period and to determine its scope.

Header Section

Field Description
Active Company If you have multiple companies set up in DPS, the name of the active company displays in the upper-left corner of the form.

Actions Bar

Field Description
Test Setup

Click this button to test the Overhead Allocation Setup. When you click the button, DPS displays a message that identifies any accounts missing from the setup and asks you to check them.

Run Click this option to process overhead allocations. DPS displays a message on the toolbar indicating that the process has either failed or completed successfully.
Schedule Click this option to display the Schedule dialog box that is used to send your selected reports to the process server for printing. Use the tabs on this dialog box to specify alerts, notifications, and time periods, as well as select the interval or frequency of process runs, and set parameters for the job. Submitted jobs enter the selected process queue in the order received.
Print Click this option to print the overhead allocations. When the Print Preview form displays, select File > Print to send the grid data to your default printer.

Fields and Options

Field Description
Periods Prior to the Current Fiscal Year Use this checkbox to include periods that occurred prior to the current fiscal year.
Range of Periods Use this option to generate the report for a range of accounting periods. On the start period and the end period fields, click and select a period from each drop-down list.
Scope The procedure that you select tells DPS whether or not to allocate overhead as well as how to allocate the expenses. Select one of the following:
  • Company-wide: Overhead Allocation distributes one pool of overhead to regular projects and tasks to which direct labor or revenue has been charged during the accounting year.
  • Organization: Overhead Allocation distributes separate pools of overhead from non-operating organizations to operating organizations. DPS then distributes overhead to projects and tasks to which direct labor or revenue has been changed during the accounting period. If you select this method, no other information is required for overhead allocation. However, the Basis field can be used by Key Financial Metrics to calculate actual overhead rate and Overhead Rate can be used for burden calculations. Setup is done for each individual organization.
  • None: DPS does not allocate overhead. If you select this option, no other information is required. The remaining fields, except Overhead Rate, are disabled. You can, however, use Overhead Rate for burden calculations. You would usually not allocate overhead if your enterprise job costs using billing rates. It is rare for an enterprise to select this method. You would not allocate overhead if your enterprise job-costs using billing rates or does gross margin reporting (comparing revenue to direct labor, direct expenses, and reimbursable expenses).

Deltek recommends that you allocate overhead to analyze project performance.