Resources & Cost
Cost Accounts Are a Chart of Accounts, Not a Price
ACCOUNT hierarchy on assignments/expenses; not a price; not MSP rate tables
What a planner means
A cost account is a hierarchical code you hang costs on so you can track spend and earned value by the organization’s account structure (hardware → coding, installation). Oracle: associate them with activity resource assignments or expenses. They are not the dollar rate, not an expense item, and not a resource.
A project can have a default cost account. New resource assignments and new expenses in that project get it. Changing the default does not rewrite existing assignments or expenses.
PROJECT.acct_id is Default Cost Account. Each TASKRSRC.acct_id and PROJCOST.acct_id is the account on that row.
This is not OBS, not a project code, and not a cost rate table.
XER: ACCOUNT
| Column | Oracle label |
|---|---|
acct_id | Unique ID |
acct_short_name | Cost Account ID |
acct_name | Cost Account Name |
acct_descr | Cost Account Description |
parent_acct_id | Parent Cost Account |
acct_seq_num | Sort Order |
FKs: PROJECT.acct_id (default), TASKRSRC.acct_id, PROJCOST.acct_id.
Microsoft Project
Desktop Project has Cost Rate Tables A–E (time-varying prices on a resource). That is a rate, not a chart of accounts. There is no ACCOUNT table in MSPDI. Some shops fake accounts with Outline Codes. Do not map ACCOUNT to Cost Rate Table A and call them the same object.
Don't
- Treat a cost account as a price, an expense, or a resource.
- Treat
PROJECT.acct_idas the account on every existing assignment. - Map ACCOUNT to MSP Cost Rate Tables or to a single Cost field.
- Invent cost-account tokens or a TASK-level
acct_idthat is not on the TASK map.