You define work types to represent a classification of work. You use work types to classify both actual and scheduled work. For example, a professional services enterprise could define the following work types:
Analysis
Design
External Training
Implementation
Non-Worked Time
Support
You can use work types to classify work for the following purposes:
Determining the billability of expenditure items
Classifying cross charge amounts into cost and revenue for cross-charged work
Assigning attributes for utilization reporting
Note: Work types roll up to resource and organization utilization categories. You define this roll up when you define work types.
You assign work types when you define project types, project templates, projects, financial tasks, team roles, project requirements, and project assignments. You also assign a work types to expenditure items when you enter transactions.
Note: The default work type for a project or project template comes from its project type. The default work type for each top-level financial task comes from the project-level work type. The default work type for each subtask comes from its parent task. The work type that you assign to a lowest-level financial task is the default work type when you enter or import an expenditure item for that task. If you set the profile option PA: Require Work Type Entry for Expenditures to Yes, then work type is a required value for project types, project templates, projects, and financial tasks.
You can select any work type for project type of Indirect or Contract.
Attention: You must define work types before you can create any of the following items in Oracle Projects:
Team roles
Project requirements
Project assignments
If no work types exist, then you receive errors when you attempt to create these items.
A work type is distinct from an expenditure type. Expenditure types classify the type of cost incurred on a transaction, whereas a work type classifies the type of work to be performed or actually performed. For example, you can enter and expenditure item for a task with an expenditure type of Clerical Labor to represent the type of cost incurred, and assign the expenditure item a work type such as Analysis to identify the type of work performed.
Set the following two profile options for work types:
PA: Transaction Billability Derived from Work Type
Specify whether Oracle Projects determines the billability of transactions based on the assigned work type.
PA: Require Work Type Entry for Expenditures
Specify whether work types are required for all expenditure items.
Billability of scheduled work is determined by the billability of the work type assigned to the scheduled assignments.
You can also choose to drive billability of actual work by the work type assigned to actual transactions. If you choose to do this, then you will have to change the work type on an actual transaction in order to change the billability of the transaction. It is recommended that you do this in order to maintain consistency between processing of actual transactions for customer billing and reporting for billable utilization.
Note: To use work types to determine whether an expenditure item is billable you must set the profile option PA: Transaction Billability Derived from Work Type to Yes.
Project work performed by resources in one organization for a project belonging to another organization is referred to as cross charged work. Typically the project owning organization provides some compensation to the resource organization for this cross charged work. This compensation can be in the form of sharing revenue with the resource organization or taking on the cost from the resource organization. This allows each organization to be measured on its performance independent of one another.
You can classify the compensation of cross charged work into cost or revenue based on the work type assigned to project work - scheduled or actual. This attribute adds another dimension to the definition of work types.
Utilization is a measure of how an organization is utilizing its resources (labor). This measure is determined by taking a ratio of utilized time to total utilizable time in a specified period for each resource in the organization.
Total utilizable time is also referred to as the total capacity of a resource in a specified period and is determined by summing up the total time available for work in that period.
Work Types provide a classification of work that can be used to determine the utilized time of labor resources.
Examples of work types for determining utilization in a professional services organization include:
Analysis, Design, Implementation, Support (Billable/Productive work)
Rework (Non-Billable / Productive work)
Internal IT Support, Bid & Proposal, Marketing (Non-Billable/Productive work)
Sick Time, Vacation, Jury Duty (Non-Capacity/Non-Productive work)
The following utilization attributes are considered when defining work types:
Unassigned time is the net hours for a given period for which a resource does not have any scheduled assignments (capacity hours minus schedule hours). Oracle Project Resource Management automatically generates totals for unassigned time for all resources who have jobs that are flagged Include in Utilization.
The Unassigned Flag enables you to identify the work type that you want to track as unassigned time.
See Also: Defining Unassigned Time Tracking, Oracle Project Resource Management User Guide
Ongoing training of labor resources is an important activity for many organizations. For example, to stay competitive in the marketplace, a professional services organization must ensure that the skills of their employees are current at all times. Therefore, tracking the amount of time allocated to training is important when managing resources.
The Training Flag enables you to identify the work types to be reported as training. The utilization reports classify work in these categories separately under a training utilization heading.
Resource capacity that goes towards time off, vacation, sick time, etc, is generally excluded from utilization calculations, in order to get a fair measure of a resources utilization. Work types that identify this time can be identified as Reduces Capacity. All work types with this attribute set automatically default to a utilization weighting percentage of zero.
Utilization calculation then reduces these hours from both the capacity and the utilized hours before determining the utilization for the resource involved.
Work type classifications become more granular when billability and cross charge classification are factored into the work type definitions and this level of granularity make work types inappropriate for utilization reporting.
For the purpose of reporting utilization, work types rollup into utilization categories. Utilization categories are implementation defined reporting categories for utilization. Similar work types that are defined separately due to billability and cross charge considerations may rollup into the same utilization category for reporting utilization.
Each work type rolls up into two utilization categories, one each for resource and organization utilization reporting.
A weighting percentage can be specified for each work type to determine the contribution of the work type in determining utilization. The weighting percentage is applied to actual and scheduled resource hours for utilization calculation. For example a resource may get 100% utilization for customer billable work such as Implementation, Support, etc but only 60% utilization for internal work such as IT Support, Marketing, or Training.
The same work type can carry two weighting percentages, one each for resource and organization utilization calculations. These two percentages will be the same in most instances but can be different in some cases. Rework is an example of when these percentages may be different.
A resource is assigned to complete some rework on an existing project. The organization will not receive any revenue for the extra work performed. The assignment has been allocated the work type Rework which automatically classifies the scheduled and actual work charged to this assignment.
As the organization is responsible for the overall performance of the project, it should not consider this work as receiving utilization credit. Otherwise, the utilization reports provide a false representation of the total number of hours being effectively utilized by the resources of the organization. Hence the weighting percentage for organization utilization should eliminate this time for the purpose of reporting utilization.
However, this should not negatively impact the personal utilization of the resource assigned to complete this work to ensure that resources are not averse to taking on such assignments in the future.
To define work type, navigate to the Work Types page.
A description of each work type attribute is shown in the following table:
| Name | Required (Yes/No) | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Yes | User-defined name |
| Description | No | User-defined description |
| Billable/ Capitalizable | Yes | Indicates whether the work type is billable or capitalizable depending on the project type class |
| Cross Charge Amount Type | Yes | Indicates the amount type for cross charged transactions. Valid values are Cost and Revenue. |
| Reduces Capacity | Yes | Indicates whether the hours charged to this work type reduce the capacity of the resource and the appropriate organization. Can only be checked if work type is Non Billable or Non Capitalizable. Default value is unchecked. |
| Unassigned | Yes | Indicates if the work type is classified as unassigned. Default value is No. |
| Training | Yes | Indicates if the work type is classified as training. Default value is No. |
| Resource Utilization Category | No | Resource utilization category for the work type. This category is used for resource utilization reporting. Work types that have no value specified for this field are not considered for resource utilization. |
| Resource Weighting Percentage | Yes | Indicates the percentage to be used for resource utilization calculations. Value must be between 0 and 100. If Reduces Capacity is selected, then the value is 0 and not updateable. Default value is 100% if the work type is billable or capitalizable; otherwise the default value is 0. |
| Organization Utilization Category | No | Organization Utilization Category for the work type. This category is used for organization utilization reporting. Work types that have no value specified for this field are not considered for organization utilization. |
| Organization Weighting Percentage | Yes | Indicates the percentage to be used for organization utilization calculation. Value must be between 0 and 100. If Reduces Capacity is selected, then the organization weighting percentage is 0 and is not updateable. Default value is 100% if the work type is billable or capitalizable; otherwise the default value is 0. |
| Effective Dates | Yes | Standard effective dates |
The following tables show examples of work types:
| Name | Billable / Capitalizable | Cross Charge Amount Type |
|---|---|---|
| Analysis | Yes | Revenue |
| Implementation | Yes | Revenue |
| Internal Support | No | Cost |
| Rework | Yes | Cost |
| Apprentice | Yes | Revenue |
| Billable- Training | Yes | Revenue |
| Unbillable-Training | No | Cost |
The following table shows examples of work types defined under the Utilization tab:
| Name | Training Flag | Reduces Capacity | Resource Utilization Category | Resource Weighting Percentage | Organization Utilization Category | Organization Weighting Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Analysis | No | No | External | 80 | External | 80 |
| Implementation | No | No | External | 80 | External | 80 |
| Internal Support | No | No | Internal | 80 | Internal | 60 |
| Rework | No | No | External | 80 | External | 0 |
| Apprentice | Yes | No | External | 50 | External | 50 |
| Billable - Training | Yes | No | External | 80 | External | 80 |
| Unbillable - Training | Yes | Yes | Internal | 0 | Internal | 0 |