You can enter attributes for projects and tasks that record information essential to the project and control how the system processes costing, billing, resources, and reporting.

Oracle Projects delivers all of the basic attributes you need to manage your projects and tasks. Your implementation team can also create additional attributes that enable you to enter and maintain project and task information that is unique to your organization.

Project Basic Information

Name
A short, unique, descriptive name of a project. Use this name to find and identify a project throughout Oracle Projects.

Long Name
A longer, unique descriptive name for the project. Can be up to 240 characters long. The default value is the short name (Name).

Number
Unique identification number of a project. You use this number to find and identify the project throughout Oracle Projects.
You can manually enter a project number, or let the system automatically generate one for you. The project numbering method you set up in the Implementation Options form determines how to create the number.
For audit trail purposes, you cannot modify a project number after you charge expenditure items, requisitions, purchase orders, or supplier invoices to the project.
Note: Unlike projects, project templates are always numbered manually. The Project Numbering implementation option, which determines whether projects are numbered automatically or manually, does not affect numbering of project templates.

Project Organization
The managing (”owning”) organization of a project. Use the organization for reporting and AutoAccounting purposes. You can choose any organization that has the following characteristics:

• The organization belongs to the project/task organization hierarchy assigned to the operating unit.
• The organization has the project/task owning organization classification enabled.
• The project type class is permitted to use the organization to create projects. This permission is determined when you define the organization.
• The organization is active as of the system date.

For audit trail purposes, there are controls over modification of the project or task owning organization.
When you attempt to change the organization on a project or task, the Verify Organization Change Extension is called to determine whether the change is allowed.
You can override the default logic in the extension in one of the following ways:

• Have your System Administrator assign the function Projects: Org Update: Override Standard Checks to your responsibility.
• Modify the logic in the Verify Organization Change extension.

If the change is allowed, Oracle Projects displays a dialog box when you save or exit the record. The dialog box asks if you want to mark existing expenditure items on the project that are dated after the date of the change for recalculation. Expenditure items dated prior to the change are not marked for recalculation.

Project Type
The project type determines how Oracle Projects processes costs (expenditure items) for a project and provides defaults and controls for project entry and processing. You must associate each project type with a project type class:

Use the Indirect project type class to collect and track expenditure item costs and labor hours for overhead activities, such as administrative and overhead work, marketing, and bid & proposal preparation. You can also define indirect projects to track time off including sick leave, vacation, and holidays

Use a Capital project type class to collect and track costs and labor hours for asset development activities that you plan to capitalize as one or more assets.

Use a Contract project type class to collect and track costs, labor hours, revenue, and billing for services performed for and reimbursed by a client.
Note: Only Oracle Project Billing supports contract projects. For audit trail purposes, you cannot change a project type after you create customer invoices for the project, or charge expenditure items, requisitions, purchase orders, or supplier invoices to the project

Status
Indicates the current status of a project.
Oracle Projects provides several predefined project statuses. You can define additional project statuses in the Status window. Status Controls for each project status allow you to set up permissions or restrictions on actions for each project status.
Next Allowable Statuses allow you to control which statuses are permitted as the new status when a project’s status is changed manually. For example, you can control whether new transactions can be charged to a project with a certain project status. The same is true for revenue accrual and invoicing.
Change Status
To change the status of a project, you choose Change Status. When you enter a status change for a project, Oracle Projects uses the following rules to determine if the status change is allowed:

• The project must have class codes entered for all required class categories.
• If the project is a contract project, the project must have at least one customer, and the total billing contribution must equal 100%.
• Each project customer for the project must have at least one billing contact defined.
• The project must have a project manager assigned to it.
• The new status must be an allowable next status

Project Start and Finish Dates
Oracle Projects uses start and finish dates to control processing, indicate estimated and scheduled duration, and serve as tools to evaluate project performance.
The start and finish dates at the project level are:
Actual: Actual dates when work on the project started and finished. You can use these dates to drive future timecard and
earned value functionality.
Scheduled: Scheduled start and finish dates for the project.
Target: The expected lifespan of the project.
Estimated: A task manager’s estimate of when work on the project will be started and finished.
Baseline: The baselined schedule
Transaction: The transaction start date and finish date control which transactions can be charged the project

Project Classifications
When specifying project classifications, you choose the class category for your project, then select one or more class codes for the class category. For example, you can specify a class category of Funding Source, and assign a class code of Federal to indicate project funding by a federal agency. You define class categories and codes when you set up project classifications.
You can specify classifications at the project level only.

Work Types

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:

1. Analysis
2. Design
3. External Training
4. Implementation
5. Non-Worked Time
6. 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

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.

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.