My firm is an expert with NetSuite’s Advanced Projects. The module does a good job at modeling the tasks, resources, and resource assignments for a project.
We recently made an enhancement to a client system to support the concept of “pooled resources”. Here is real-life example where pooled resources are valuable:
Project Team Task Assignments
Imagine a project task where you estimate it will take 100 hours to complete. At the same time, you are not exactly sure who on your resource team is going to perform the work. You have a team of four people that can do the work — but it’s not important if one or all of them do the work. You want to set a budget but you don’t want the collective work of your resource team to exceed 100 hours.
See the image below (click to enlarge)of how you would setup the project task resource assignment in NetSuite.
Since you have four resources that potentially can work on the project, the estimated work effort is 100 hours. So far, so good. The challenge is that one of your resources may work over 25 hours. For example, imagine the first resource works 40 hours and none of the other resources perform any work. NetSuite will increase the overall task estimate from 100 hours to 115 hours. Here is why.
NetSuite will increase your estimates if a resource actually enters (via timesheets) more time than estimated. It does this because it assumes that your estimate was off. NetSuite wants to always help you see the total projected effort to complete the task (and project). In our example, when the time entered was 40 hours but the original estimate was 25 hours for that single resource, the estimate was increased by 15 hours to meet the actual. Hence the total project task estimate increased by 15 hours from 100 hours to 115 hours.
Pooled Resources Share Service Workload
In our Pooled Resource model, we don’t want this behavior. What we want is for the project task to “re-balance”. This means we want the overall task to stay at 100 estimated hours but to spread the load between the resource team.
The enhancement was to mark a NetSuite Project Task to “Pool Resources to Balance Remaining Work”. See image below (click to enlarge).
With this enhancement, as soon as a resource enters actual time that exceeds their estimate, the task will re-balance. In our example, instead of letting NetSuite bump the new estimate to 115 hours, we re-balance the estimate as so it looks as follows:
| Hour Estimates |
||
| Team Member | Revised | Original |
| Resource 1: | 40 | 25 |
| Resource 2: | 20 | 25 |
| Resource 3: | 20 | 25 |
| Resource 4: | 20 | 25 |
| Totals | 100 | 100 |
With this enhancement, if other resources perform work on the task, they will see that their time is now less than the original 25 assigned. Ultimately, if the collective team effort exceeds 100, we let NetSuite increase the estimate as it normally would.
Summary
We think NetSuite pooled resources are a common requirement that would be used for any sizable organization that has team members that share the work load. We love the way NetSuite allows us to refine the business application to add logic to closely fit requirements.
Is there a challenge you face with NetSuite Advanced Projects where we can help?
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Marty Zigman
Holding all three official certifications, Marty is regarded as the top NetSuite expert and leads a team of senior professionals at Prolecto Resources, Inc. He is a former Deloitte & Touche CPA and has held CTO roles. For over 30 years, Marty has produced leadership in ERP, CRM and eCommerce business systems. Contact Marty to set up a conversation.
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