Track personnel expenses and efforts
With EMDESK, you can track and report personnel costs and efforts, like organisations and people, on work items, e.g. projects, work packages and tasks. You can find the expense tracking in the "Expenses" section. All records are organised in the table view with the options to filter, search, and export expenses records.
To report regular expenses, like travel or goods and services, please read here.
Note: To report, edit, and delete personnel expenses, you must have Manage access rights to the "Expenses" section. In addition, you must have access to projects, activities and participants to which the expenses are linked to.
For example, to report an expense occurred on WP2 and WP3 for participant A, you need Manage access to the "Expenses" section and at least Read access to organisation A and activity WP2 and WP3 (see "Roles, access levels, and access rights").
Users with the Admin or Manager access level can manage expenses linked to all activities and participants.
Tip: Read here how to import expenses.
Follow the instructions below on how to report personnel costs and efforts.
- Click Expenses in Home menu, this will open the "Expenses" section.
- Then click + Report Expense at the bottom. This will open the new expense sidebar, where you can report the expense:
Tip: You can also report expenses using the option menu at each project or activity under Workplan or at each participant under Participants.
- Set the date, period or reporting period.
- By default, the date is set.
- Click "Select period instead of date" to also set an end date.
- Click "Select reporting period instead" to set a reporting period (which needs to be created beforehand).
Note: When setting a custom period or reporting period, the expense/effort will be evenly distributed throughout the period.
- Select the project or activity for which the costs were spent.
- Select the participant (organisation or person) where the costs were incurred.
- Select the Personnel costs category (type "Rate") to enter costs and efforts based on a rate; to enter costs only, select the Personnel costs category of the type "Fix".
Note:
- There may be multiple personnel cost categories. Cost categories can be customized and configured in the Customization settings. There are two types of cost categories: fixed amounts (Fix) and rate-based amounts (Rate) costs. Rate-based costs, such as personnel costs, depend on the quantity and rate, whereas the fixed amounts represent costs for goods or services.
- Indirect Cost Rate: Once project or activity, cost category and participant are selected, the indirect cost rate is auto-selected. To edit the indirect cost rate, you must have at least Edit access right to the participant and adjust the cost rate in its Financial Profile (see "Roles, access levels, and access rights").
- Select the correct cost rate from the available options, which depend on the selected participant (only available when you choose the personnel costs category of the type "Rate").
Note:
- To edit cost rates, you must have Edit access to the participant and update the cost rate in its Financial Profile (see "Roles, access levels, and access rights").
- To report effort/time without costs, choose "No rate", the input for costs will then disappear:
- Once you chose the cost rate, the input for effort appears at the top right. Enter the amount of spent effort.
Note:
The unit is set according to the unit which set in the cost rate (Person/Month (PM), Person/Day (PD), or Person/Hour (PH)). To change the unit, click the drop down:
To adjust the default time unit for the cost rate, you must have al least Edit access rights to the participant you are reporting about and update the cost rate in its Financial Profile (see "Roles, access levels, and access rights").
- The cost is auto-calculated based on the effort and rate (optionally, you can enter the costs first, the effort is calculated based on the rate)
- Enter a short description regarding the expense.
- Click Save Expense to create the expense.
Optionally, you can:
- Not eligible: Switch on the toggle, when this expense is not eligible for funding.
- No overheads: Switch on the toggle, when the indirect cost rate shall not be applied to this expense.
- Tags: Classify and label the costs with tags
Note: Activity, participant, and cost category must be defined for each expense, otherwise the expense is considered as unassigned. Unassigned entries are listed in a separated table in the end of the "Expenses" tab and are not accounted in the expenses.