Adding a Non-Contract Item with Setup to Stop Budget Overage Messages
Reason for This Change
If you need to process purchases against unplanned work, you will need a Planning Line to record the cost against the Lot. If this work has no budget and you want to apply the costs to all Lots, the system will present one or two error messages per purchase line when you process a purchase invoice. This can become very annoying, and the best solution is not to turn off the over-budget messages.
Scenarios
- You have contracted excavation work based on a per-model cost. You find that additional excavation work is to be done and you want to use a different vendor to do the work. You get one invoice per week for the work and want to apply the costs to all Lots.
- You must pay for a service to remove waste from the site. This was not part of the original budget but must be done. Each week for the duration of the project, waste removal is billed as one number that you want to apply to each Lot.
Solution
Summary of a solution:
- We will create a new Base Contract Item with zero cost.
- We then push this item to the Lots directly, bypassing Models but still creating Planning Lines with zero budget cost.
- We will then increase the quantity on the Planning Lines to allow this item to be used repeatedly.
Note
There are alternatives to this solution such as creating extra Planning Lines on each Lot. The solution provided here is one that other customers have considered a reasonable compromise between effort to use, tracking, and ease of setup.
Setup of the Item etc.
- Create a new Base Contract (Construction) Item.
- It is easiest to find an existing item that does exactly what you are doing and use the Copy button found under the Actions button.
- On the Item Card:
- Make sure the Cost Detail Code matches what you want to report on.
- Remember to setup the default Vendor on the Item if you know it, it will help with later processing and/or reporting.
- Change the “Budget Overage Control” to “Budget & Estimate Bypass” to turn off all messages on the Purchase Invoice.
- Make sure that the Unit Cost is zero.
- It is easiest to find an existing item that does exactly what you are doing and use the Copy button found under the Actions button.
Important
If you do not set the Unit Cost to zero, you will increase the budget of the Lot without having a Vendor Contract.
If you do want to increase the budget, then set the cost up either on the Item or the Planning Lines.
- From the Item Card click on Action and then Push to all relevant Models first. (Otherwise, you will receive an error).
- If you have not added all Models to all Lots and this charge will be on future Lots, you should assign a Template Model to these Lots, then push that Construction Item to the Template Model.
- Next, from the Items list, select Pusch to Lots. (the Planning Line will only be created on Lots that have the Model assigned that contains that Construction Item).
- Go to the Phase:
- Click on Phase Items and find the Item that was created for you.
- Click on the Planning Lines cue on this Phase Item.
- Click on the Edit List button and go to the Quantity field.
- Update the Quantity field to at least the quantity that you think you might need. For example, if this is for waste removal that might be once or twice per week for 2 years, you might choose to enter 1,000 to allow lots of extra.
Important
The quantity that you enter on the Planning Lines does not matter if the Unit Cost is zero. If, however, you intend to increase the budget amount (Unit Cost), the quantity is very important, and you should enter the Quantity and Unit Cost that will give the correct Total Cost for this entry.
Note
If you do not enter a big enough quantity here, the system will eventually run out of quantity to consume on this Planning Line. If this happens, either increase the quantity and carry on or create a new line with a new quantity.