Why your project cost is missing from the reserves cash flow

Overview

Project costs appear in the reserves cash flow in the Project Breakdown section of the Monthly Cash Flow report.

A project's cost reaches that section when several conditions line up, including the fiscal year, the project's schedule, its scope, its status and its payments.

When one of those is off, the project's row can be missing from the breakdown, or present with nothing behind it.

Setup

Projects appears in the left navigation under OPERATE.

A per\-property setting, Display Projects (Feature Toggle), governs whether Projects appears. The setting is in the ADVANCED SETTINGS section on the General tab of Property Settings.

Open Property Settings from Settings at the bottom of the left navigation.

With that setting off, Projects is hidden from the left navigation and the Project Reports tab does not appear under Reports. Without the Project Reports tab, there is no Monthly Cash Flow link to open.

Display Projects is set by SmartProperty. To have it turned on or off for a property, contact SmartProperty.

Managing scope needs edit access to Projects. Without edit access, Manage Scope is not shown, and the tab shows "No scope has been defined for this project."

How-to

Work through the checks below against the project that is not showing.

Check the fiscal year first

Open Reports, then the Project Reports tab. The Monthly Cash Flow link appears there, marked Beta, when the fiscal year you have selected is the current one.

Projects in the left navigation is limited to the current fiscal year too.

If an earlier or later fiscal year is selected, switch to the current fiscal year before checking anything else.

Check the project's Start Date and End Date

The report picks up a project when its Start Date falls inside the fiscal year, or its End Date does. A project with neither date inside the fiscal year is left out.

Check the project for either of these:

Neither date has been set.

Both dates fall outside the fiscal year. A project that starts in an earlier year and finishes in a later one spans the fiscal year without either date landing inside it.

Set both dates in Project schedule when you add or edit a project.

The project's Overview tab shows both dates, with an Edit link when they are blank.

Check the Total Contract Amount

The report uses the project's Total Contract Amount as its approved figure. Total Contract Amount is calculated from the project's scope: the Original Budget Amount on each scope line item, plus any change orders.

A project with no scope line items therefore has a Total Contract Amount of zero. The project's row can appear in the breakdown and still contribute nothing to the year's expenses.

To add scope, open the project, go to Financials, then Project Scope, then Manage Scope.

Select Add Section, then Add Line Item inside the section, and enter the Original Budget Amount.

The same rule explains an empty Project Scope list on the payment window.

A payment is recorded against a scope line item. The line items have to exist first.

Check how the payments were recorded

Each payment has a Funding Source. The reserves cash flow counts a payment when its Funding Source is Reserve, or when Funding Source was left blank.

A payment recorded against a different funding source still appears on the project and in its Total Paid to Date. The payment does not reach the reserves cash flow.

Open the project, go to Financials, then Payments, and check Funding Source on each payment.

Check whether the project is Completed

The report does not forecast a project forward once its status is Completed.

For a Completed project, the report shows the payments recorded against the project and no projected amount for the remaining months, even when the Total Contract Amount has not been fully paid.

When the component cost went missing too

Projects and components are not counted twice.

When a project falls inside the fiscal year and is linked to a component, that component stops appearing as its own row in the breakdown, and the project's row stands in for it.

Combined with the scope rule above, one combination accounts for a cost that has dropped out of the year's expenses: a project inside the fiscal year, linked to a component, with no scope line items.

The component's own row has been taken out, and the project's row shows a Total Contract Amount of zero in its place.

Add the scope line items to bring the amount back, under the project.

The project's Components tab lists the linked components. Select Add Component to link more.

Reference

What completing a project changes

Completing a project updates its linked components, including the year of installation, and carries those updates into the planning year. There is no way to reverse a completion yourself. If a project was completed by mistake, contact SmartProperty.

How the monthly figures are spread

The Project Breakdown toolbar has a "How projected costs are calculated" note.

Read the note when the annual total looks right but a particular month does not.

The note covers, among other things, how the remaining balance is split across the project's remaining months, and what the report uses when the project has no End Date. The note refers to that date as the "Estimated Due Date".