QuickBooks classes are ideal when you need to analyze finances across accounts, income, expenses, customers, jobs, vendors. Classes help you track financial results by categories such as business unit, location, partner, or item. Classes can span time and items, too, because you assign a class to individual transactions (such as checks, bills, sales receipts, and invoices) as well as to specific line items on invoices or bills.
The schedule logic for a project is the collection of dependencies you create between activities. The goal of this schedule logic is to provide a realistic model of when project activities should occur. Want to up your scheduling game? This article explains when to use each dependency type to link activities.
Finish-to-start is the one you’ll use most often. A finish-to-start dependency tells you that when one activity (called the predecessor) finishes, the next activity (the successor) can start. For example, you have to finish writing some code before you can test it. If you don’t work in software, maybe this example will resonate: when your older child teases the younger one, the younger one starts crying.
On the other hand, the start-to-finish dependency type is rare (which is a gift because it’s also confusing). This dependency means that the start of one activity determines when another one finishes. It’s confusing because the predecessor occurs later than the successor, as shown in the figure, and most people think of predecessors occurring before successors. (Remember, with dependencies, the predecessor is the activity that controls the timing of the successor, not when it occurs time-wise.) For example, consider a sales clerk who works a shift in a retail store. To keep the store open for customers, the clerk for the next shift has to show up to start his or her shift before the sales clerk on duty can go home (finish the shift).
Let’s look at the remaining two dependency types: start-to-start and finish-to-finish.
Suppose one person is scheduled to spend 10 days writing software documentation and another one is scheduled to work 10 days reviewing the documentation to make sure it’s accurate and clear. At first glance, you might think start-to-start and finish-to-finish dependencies work equally well. When the writing starts, the review could start almost immediately. Or, when the writing is complete, the review could finish soon after.
But start-to-start dependencies can cause trouble if activities don’t occur as scheduled. Suppose the writer runs into issues with the software and the writing task is going to take 15 days instead of 10. As you can see in the figure, the writing and review started at the same time, which means that the review is scheduled to finish 5 days before the writing. Some of the writing wouldn’t get reviewed unless you caught this error in your schedule logic.
The writing and review activities should be linked with a finish-to-finish dependency. That way, the schedule logic guarantees that the review doesn’t finish until the writing is complete, even if the writing takes longer. This dependency also works if the review takes less time than writing—say, 5 days. With finish-to-finish, you could wait 5 days before starting to review documentation, as shown in the figure below. If the writing takes longer than you expect, the delayed finish date for writing also delays the finish for review.
As you can see, almost all your dependencies will be finish-to-start or finish-to-finish. Another dependency best practice is to avoid negative lag (also called lead), because it implies that you know when the predecessor activity will finish. (You can explore this practice in this movie from my revamped and updated course, Project Management Foundations: Scheduling, which was released in April 2018).
No matter how carefully I manage my workload, I end up buried with to-dos every so often. If you’re like me, an overwhelming to-do list could make you freeze up and not get anything done. My solution is time-management heresy!
Crossing a to-do off my list gives me a boost of energy and motivation to get more done! So, I do something quick and easy that I want done, even if its priority couldn’t be any lower. With my energy and motivation restored, I can go back to a more orthodox time management approach. My newest course, Project Tips Weekly, releases one short movie each week, so it’s a great example of this tactic—from my perspective as the author as well as for viewers.
Here’s how to tame an overwhelming to-do list:
1. Pick a task that won’t take much time (5 to 10 minutes max) and that you want to get done. You know which one it is. Maybe it’s cleaning up the receipts on your desk, mapping out your day, or watching a LinkedIn Learning movie!
That’s one thing less to do. If you keep a list of to-dos, you can mark the task as complete and bask in that feeling of accomplishment. That brings up a question…
2. Do you have a to-do list?
A heap of crumpled, smudged notes with scribbled to-dos doesn’t count.
If you don’t have a list, take 10 minutes and add everything you can think of to it. Include importance, urgency, and level of effort for each entry if you know what they are. (Stop at 10 minutes. You can add to the list any time later on.)
Writing up a list on paper does commit you to your to-dos, and you get satisfaction from drawing a line through each task you complete. However, you’ll rewrite to-dos onto new sheets as priorities change and new to-dos come up. If you throw past lists away, you lose your work history, too.
A spreadsheet, OneNote table, or some other app can help in a lot of ways. You can sort the entries by importance, urgency, or level of effort. You can mark to-dos as complete and move them to your completed list. If you include the date you complete each to-do, you can motivate yourself when you’re feeling down by looking back at everything you’ve accomplished the past, week, month, or year.
3. Sort the list by importance, then urgency, then level of effort.
With a sorted to-do list, it’s easy to see your important and urgent to-dos.
In the example below, I have one to-do that’s important, urgent, and doesn’t take a lot of time: prepping movies for my Project Tips Weekly course – which has one short tip come out each week. Depending on the tip, I can get one prepped in an hour or two. That’s definitely the first thing I’m going to tackle after the next step.
4. With the sorted list in front of you, get your important and non-urgent to-dos on your calendar!
Because they aren’t urgent, they’re easy to forget unless you schedule them. Be realistic. Don’t try to finish them all in the next few days. Space them out so you have time for important and more urgent work.
Last year, I made a list of places I would like to visit on vacation. Some friends and I agreed those were places to go and that’s how it sat for almost a year. Finally, I realized I needed to get at least a few on the schedule, so I typed in 2018, 2019, 2020 into OneNote and then moved my top-priority vacation spots into one of those years. Lo and behold, four of those are now on my calendar!
LinkedIn Learning videos might fall into this category. Suppose you want to learn a topic, whether it’s Microsoft Project, gathering requirements, or fixing your photos with Photoshop. You can schedule 10 or 15 minutes every day or two to watch a few movies on that topic. Before you know it, you’ve finished an entire course!
5. Now, grab one of your important/urgent to-dos and get to work!
By the end of the day, you may have finished several things on your to-do list, including a couple of important, urgent tasks. Move those to-dos into a Completed list and enjoy another energy boost seeing how much you’ve accomplished.
I’m enjoying working on my Project tips course. Instead of prepping several dozen movies in a short time, I can add individual movies to my to-do list – one each week for the next calendar quarter.
6. Before you call it a day, take 5 to 10 minutes to plan what you will tackle from your list tomorrow.
It might take a week to get the to-do list under control. However, it takes only a few minutes each day to keep your list under control. For more on time management, check out Chris Croft’s course.
Saving custom views is easy when you plan ahead. Modifying a built-in view and then saving it as a custom view is still easy, but it does take a few more steps.
If you set out to save a customized view to use again and again, the steps are easy:
1. Display the built-in view that’s closest to what you want, like the Detail Gantt view.
2. On the Task tab or View tab, click the bottom half of the Gantt Chart button, and then choose Save View.
3. In the Save View dialog box, name the view, for instance, C_Updating, and then click OK.
I like to add C_ at the beginning of each custom view, so they’re easy to spot in drop-down lists and in the global template.
Project creates the new view and a new table (C_Updating Table1) to go with it.
4. Now you can customize the view and table however you want.
The custom view is available to use in the future – and the original built-in view is still available.
What if you display a built-in Project view and go wild building a super-cool customized view with filters, groups, timescale settings, table columns, and formatting? THEN you realize you want your creation to be a custom view and you want the original built-in views definition back. No biggie. A few more steps get you where you want to be.
Suppose you want a view for updating tasks. You’ve displayed the built-in Tracking Gantt view, applied the In Progress Tasks filter, set the timescale to days, and added and rearranged columns in the table. Remember, when you modify a built-in view, Project saves copies of the modified view and table in your Project file (using the built-in view and table names). The global template still contains the original built-in definition of the view and table.
Here’s what you do to save the modified view as a new one and bring back the original built-in view:
1. On the View tab, click the bottom half of the Gantt Chart button (or any other view button like Task Usage or Resource Usage), and then choose Save View.
2. In the Save View dialog box, name the view, like C_TaskUpdating, and then click OK.
Just like saving a view before you add all the modifications, Project saves the new view and a new table, in this example, C_TaskUpdating for the view and C_TaskUpdating Table 1 for the table. If you have the “Automatically add new views, tables, filters, and groups to the global” option turned on (it’s in the Project Options dialog box Advanced category), Project also saves the new view and table to your global template.
3. To get the built-in view (Tracking Gantt in this example) back to its original definition, click the bottom half of the Gantt Chart button (or the appropriate view button on the View tab) and choose the built-in view.
4. Click the bottom half of the Gantt Chart button (or other view button) again. This time, on the drop-down menu, choose Reset to Default.
5. When the message appears telling you that you are about to revert to the view from your global template, click Yes.
Now, you have your new view with all its customization, and your built-in view is back to the original definition.
On another note, what if other team members need access to your project along with your custom view handiwork but don’t have Microsoft Project? You might want to check out Microsoft Project Viewer.
Microsoft Office rules can take the drudgery out of managing emails. Say you get a gazillion emails from the treasurer of the board you belong to and you want all those emails to go into a separate folder. A rule can automatically move emails from that email into the folder you specify. Even better, suppose you get emails from someone you’d rather not hear from. You can set up a rule to delete those emails straight away.
Once you’re spoiled by Outlook rules, you won’t want to work without them. If you get a new computer or use Outlook on a desktop and laptop computer, you can move your rules from one computer to another.
Let’s take a quick look at how to create a rule in Outlook 2013.
Now let’s get rules over to another computer:
To import the rules on another computer:
Ta-da! You’re rules are available in Outlook on this computer.
Does your brain produce words faster than your fingers can type? Are you tired of correcting your fat-fingered typos? Microsoft Office AutoCorrect not only fixes typing mistakes. You can take the tedium out of typing by building shortcuts for long words of phrases into AutoCorrect.
Out of the box, AutoCorrect has fixes that change misspellings like abotu into about, or replaces “:)” with a happy face. If you consistently mistype words, you can add the typo and the correct entry to AutoCorrect. That way, AutoCorrect automatically fixes it next time around. A couple of my consistent typos are cateogry and accoutn.
Why not use AutoCorrect to speed up your typing, too? When I’m working on a QuickBooks book, I use phrases like dialog box, dialog boxes, financial institution, and “On the Home Page, click Create Invoices” a gazillion times. But I don’t have to type them out every time. I create AutoCorrect entries for phrases like those, and let it do the heavy lifting. When I type dbx, AutoCorrect changes it to dialog box. Dbxs turns into dialog boxes. Finin expands to financial institution. And hpci bursts out into On the Home Page, click Create Invoices.
By the way (AutoCorrect shortcut btw), when you set up AutoCorrect entries, they work in Word, Excel, Outlook, and so on. Try it. I think you’ll like it.
Here’s how to create AutoCorrect entries:
AutoCorrect entries
That’s it! The only downside is when you work on someone else’s computer and dbx stubbornly refuses to expand.
If you get a new computer, it won’t have all your AutoCorrect entries. No problem! You can copy a file with your AutoCorrect entries to another computer. The hard part is knowing where to look for the AutoCorrect file.
It’s in C:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Office. The file you want for English is MSO1033.acl. All you have to do is copy that file onto a thumb drive, plug the drive into the other computer, and copy it into the same folder on the other computer. (If you’re copying to a brand new computer, overwriting the file is perfectly OK. If you overwrite a file that already has custom AutoCorrect entries, those entries are gone.)
I wrote a guest post about multiple project baselines for Erik Van Hurck’s blog, The Project Corner. Follow the link to learn about the contest we’re running: we’re giving away two copies of my books. Here’s the post:
A baseline is the key to staying on top of where your project is compared to where it should be. When you set a baseline in Project (you can set up to 11), the program takes a snapshot of schedule and cost values, which you can then use to see how current values compare to what you originally planned. What can you do with Project’s baselines? And how do you view them when you have more than one?
Saving more than one baseline comes in handy in several situations. Suppose you incorporate a big change request into your project plan. Keeping your original baseline is a good idea, especially when you want to answer stakeholder questions about why the big difference from the original dates and cost. At the same time, you can use the new baseline with the change request to track performance for the plan with the change request in place.
An additional baseline might be called for when a project experiences other types of changes: stakeholders dramatically increase or decrease the project scope or a higher priority project puts yours temporarily on hold. The original baseline values no longer produce meaningful variances, so you need a new baseline that reflects the revised schedule and cost.
Multiple baselines can also help document trends over time. Suppose your project has fallen behind schedule and you implement a recovery strategy. You can keep the original baseline, but set a new one using the values in place before you start the recovery. That way, you can compare your original variances to recovery variances to see whether your course correction is helping. Another way to evaluate trends is to add baselines at key points in a project, such as at every fiscal quarter or perhaps at the end of each phase.
If you’re going to use multiple baselines, it’s a good idea to store a second copy of your original baseline, for example, to Baseline 1 fields. That way, you have a copy of the original baseline for posterity. At the same time, you can keep your most recent baseline in Project’s Baseline fields, so it’s easy to see the variances from your most recent baseline in the default Variance fields.
Here’s how to set multiple baselines while easily keeping track of variances for the most recent one:
When you open the Set Baseline dialog box after saving at least one baseline, the “Set baseline” drop-down list shows the last saved date for the baseline. For example, baselines that have been set have “(last saved on mm/dd/yy)” appended to the end of their names, where mm/dd/yy is the last saved date for that baseline.
If you try to set a baseline that has already been saved, Project warns you that the baseline has been used and asks if you want to overwrite it. Click Yes to overwrite the baseline’s existing values (for example, if you’ve used up all 11 baselines and want to reuse an older one). If you don’t want to overwrite it, click No, and then, back in the Set Baseline dialog box, select a different baseline.
When you’re ready to save another baseline, here’s what you do:
Note: For each additional baseline, save the project schedule once as Baseline and once as the next empty baseline.
When you want to compare your current progress to your most recent baseline, Tracking Gantt view is perfect. It shows colored task bars for the current schedule above gray task bars for the baseline start and finish dates.
However, if you save more than one baseline, you may want to view them simultaneously so you can compare performance from one to the next. Multiple Baselines Gantt view displays different color task bars for Baseline, Baseline 1, and Baseline 2. To display this view, in the View tab’s Task Views section, choose Other Views –>More Views. In the More Views dialog box, double-click Multiple Baselines Gantt. Multiple Baselines Gantt shows task bars for only Baseline, Baseline1, and Baseline2. It doesn’t display task bars for the current schedule.
To see different baselines or more baselines, you can modify your view in several ways. From the ribbon, you can display any baseline you want in any Gantt Chart view. Display the Gantt Chart view you want and then choose the Format tab. In the Bar Styles section, click the Baseline down arrow, and then choose the baseline you want to display. For example, if you display Tracking Gantt view, by default it uses Baseline for the baseline task bars. However, if you choose Baseline2 in the Format tab’s Bar Styles Baseline menu, the baseline task bars reflect Baseline2’s dates.
But what if you want a view to show task bars for Baseline1 through Baseline4 to evaluate trends over time? In that case, you can modify the view definition to do just that.
Here’s what the bar styles definitions look like when you add another baseline to the view:
And here’s what the view looks like with more than three sets of baseline bars.
The Set Baseline dialog box has a second option: “Set interim plan.” Unlike Project baselines, interim plans save only start and finish dates, not duration, cost, and work. Interim plans are a holdover from earlier Project versions, when the program offered only one baseline.
Even with the 11 baselines that Project now offers, interim plans may come in handy. If you import a project schedule from Project 2002 and earlier (it could happen), any additional baseline information ends up in interim plan fields (Start1/Finish1 through Start10/Finish10). You can copy that data from the interim plan Start and Finish fields (Start2/Finish2, for example) into baseline fields like Baseline2.You can also save interim plans as partial baselines in between the full baselines you save.
Don’t forget: for a chance to win a copy of one of my books, visit Erik Van Hurck’s blog, The Project Corner.
At a recent work reunion lunch, two of my former colleagues looked at me sheepishly as they confessed that they hadn’t made any progress on their respective book ideas since the last time we met. Yeah, like I get everything done that I intend to…but their confessions did make me reflect on some of my self-motivational tricks.
Sometimes, my workload looks like an unfortunate wild pig in an anaconda’s belly (except that, unlike the snake, I don’t get to rest for weeks afterward without additional input). My ability to chew through work isn’t due to genius, drugs, output of minions, or Santeria spells. Deadlines are a huge motivator for me and, hooboy, do publishers have deadlines.
However, I also have a few tricks that help me git ‘em done. If some of your New Year’s resolutions are starting to smell overly ripe, maybe one of these techniques will help.
1. Break a big project down into pieces.
Big projects can be scary: write a book, revamp a website, end world hunger, stop the zombie apocalypse.
Don’t let the big picture paralyze you. Take a sledgehammer to a big project and break it into pieces that aren’t scary. You don’t have to do everything at once. You don’t even have to build a plan in one sitting!
Hint: If you aren’t ready to tackle a big project, don’t force it. Add an entry for the entire project to your to-do list (tip #2), so you don’t forget about it. If the project is something you can’t put off, like preparing your tax return, then hammer away (and give yourself small rewards after you finish each small step).
Here’s how I tackled modernizing my web site (which, by the way, had been on my list for about four years). I was a tad overwhelmed by what’s changed online since I first set up my website: Web 2.0, search engine optimization, responsive web pages, and so on. So I started by finding someone to help me. I have a lot of friends with web pages, so I asked around. Scott Baird (scott@bairdllc.com) was the unlucky, but very competent soul I chose to work with.
A few phone calls and emails were all it took to come up with project to-dos: choose a Word Press template, plan the new layout, build the site, add content, review, test, and tweak. Scott recommended a few templates to consider (out of tens of thousand), so that step wasn’t too bad.
My next to-do was more involved: I had a good idea of the web pages I wanted, but I needed to figure out how I wanted each page laid out and gather the content for each one. I tackled this task one web page at a time. It went something like this:
I used the same technique for my review. Small doses of reviewing each page and documenting the changes needed. Scott made a lot of the changes initially. As the tweaking continued, I edited more so I learned how to maintain my site.
All told, it took about three weeks — an hour or two each day — to complete the work. If you’re trying to cut back on your wine consumption, the next tip shows you how to coax yourself into gittin’ your to-dos done.
2. Pester yourself.
Have you ever been harried by someone impatiently waiting for you? A small child in a snowsuit in desperate need of a bathroom, for example. You do whatever it takes to get them out of your hair, off your back, or out of your back hair for that matter. Keeping to-dos in view is one way to apply that same kind of pressure. You may be surprised how much you get done just for the sake of shortening that list.
The reminder tool I use is a Windows 7 electronic sticky note on my computer monitor. I throw everything into one note that sits at my primary monitor’s top-right: work, personal, important non-urgent stuff, honey-dos without a honey to do them, and fun stuff like learning Italian, playing the accordion, or training the neighborhood mountain lion to fetch. (Only one of these fun things is on my actual to-do list.)
I add, delete, revise, and rearrange to-dos as often as I want. I move to-dos with looming deadlines closer to the top of the list. The ones at the top tickle my attention: “Hey! How about now?” I sometimes knock out a simple to-do, because crossing something off my list gives me a boost of energy, which can kick-start a tougher to-do. I delete to-dos when they’re done (or I decide I don’t need to do them anymore).
Remember tip #1 and those projects that aren’t ready for primetime? Put them in the bottom half of the list. They might sit there a while like my website modernization. I scan the entire list several times a day, and eventually, those projects’ time will come.
What if you aren’t chained to your computer? Take a photo of your sticky note to-do list with your smartphone. If you have some spare time while you’re out and about, dig into one of your assignments, which leads into the next tip…
3. Carry a notepad at all times.
Reporters and cops carry notepads and you should, too. If you remember something you forgot to add to your list, write it down. If the perfect chapter opener comes to you, write it down. If you’re in line at the department of motor vehicles, write a whole damn chapter.
For something really quick like that perfect chapter opener, turn on your phone’s voice recorder and record it. A notepad app on a smartphone will do in a pinch. My issue with smartphone notes is that typing intelligible notes on a phone keyboard demands so much concentration I might forget some of what I wanted to document.
4. Get colleagues to apply pressure.
Let’s get back to my former colleagues who were embarrassed by their lack of progress. I wasn’t calling them every week asking “How’s it going? Are you done yet?” But they felt guilty about not making progress, because they had told me about their plans. Committing publicly to goals can be a powerful motivator.
If you aren’t living at home with your mother keeping after you to get things done, invite cohorts to help. It’s a win-win. Everyone in the group feels peer pressure to do what they told the group they would do. (Face-to-face is ideal, but Google Hangouts, conference calls, and even email exchanges can work, too.)
Each person commits to goals and timeframes. Then, at meetings, each person talks about what they’ve done, what they haven’t done, and what they’re going to do about it. Another plus, members can help each other get unstuck by answering questions, making suggestions, or holding an intervention.
OK, enough. *My* to-do list is peeking from behind my document window and I feel the urge to get something done.
I was going to talk about how to get things done for my first post of the year, but 2014 is when I balance work and fun. So I’m starting things off with a tale of the calorically dense foodie delight that I cooked on New Year’s Day: Butternut Squash Duck Confit Wraps with Brown Butter Sage Sauce.
Several years ago, I had ravioli filled with butternut squash and duck confit, and I’ve been salivating over them ever since. I had some duck confit in the freezer left over from last year’s duck cassoulet. So I decided to give the ravioli a try.
Fat overload #1. I tracked down a butternut squash ravioli recipe. (I have become a huge fan of Emeril Lagasse. I’ve made quite a few of the recipes he’s posted on the Food Network and they are all fabulous.) The pureed butternut squash is to die for. It has heavy cream, Parmagiano-Reggiano grated cheese, and butter, so it’s delicious, although not particularly healthy.
Fat overload #2. I thawed the duck confit, shredded it, and fried it until it was nice and crispy.
Fat overload #3. The brown butter sage sauce. I grow sage in my balcony garden each summer and then freeze the leaves in September. This sauce is also great on salmon. I like to cook the sage leaves until they’re crispy.
I still don’t have a pasta maker or a ravioli tray. But I did have chapati bread in the freezer. So, I lightly toasted some chapati in a frying pan, then added some squash and confit, rolled them up, and dipped them in the sage sauce. Yummmm.
I know. I know. It’s time to cleanse. Keep this recipe on hand for a special occasion.
I was writing about assumptions for a project management training course and struggling to think of a good example. Fast forward to the first day of a vacation when I stressfully experienced a great example of an assumption and the trouble it can cause.
With two flights, an overnight in Toronto, immigration, and customs, I opted for carry-on luggage. No baggage fees and faster — or so I assumed.
At the entrance to the jetway, the attendant handed me a gate check tag. I attached the tag to my roller bag, placed it on the cart, and got on the plane without another thought. I assumed the bag was traveling a mere 50 feet from the cart to the belly of the plane and then, in Toronto, would travel another 50 feet from the belly of the plane to my waiting hand on a different jetway.
A few hours later, the baggage handler finished tossing gate-checked bags onto the jetway and I stood there with a disappointed look on my face instead of a roller bag handle in my hand.
I headed for the baggage carousel. Maybe the bag got mixed in with the checked bags. Nope. My only consolation was that several other people were missing luggage as well. Visions of X-Files-esque conspiracies arose. Hmmm. Maybe the airline came up with a different solution to the weight restriction problem they had on the flight…Pull a passenger off or temporarily inconvenience a few passengers with delayed luggage?
As I spoke to the airline folks and filled out a form, I kicked myself about my erroneous assumption. Each person I spoke to asked for the gate check stub. When I admitted I didn’t have it, these people shared the same reaction – a slow, sad shake of the head accompanied by a quiet “That’s going to make it tough.” I felt like an idiot. Then, I wondered whether I had an ID tag on the bag.
At the Toronto airport, this disaster cost about an hour and a half. More annoying, I was on a rare vacation, but stuck in project manager mode. What to buy? Should I rent a car so it’s easier to shop? Shopping for clothes will take more time and cost money—and I HATE to shop.
What makes assumptions so dangerous is that they lull us into thinking things are fine when they might not be; or lead us to believe that we should proceed one way when we should go the other. In many cases, the assumptions and subsequent choices pass by in a moment, so we don’t even realize that there is something to consider.
What can we do to identify assumptions and get them out in the open?
Luckily, this story had a happy ending. When I arrived, I was ready with a list and set to buy a bare minimum to see me through the week. But first, I had to file a delayed baggage report. As I walked toward the baggage counter, my eyes caught on before my brain. There, waiting with several other bags, was my wayward roller bag with a RUSH tag attached.
Below are some interesting links for you! Enjoy your stay...
O'Reilly 50% Ebook Deal of the Day
Microsoft Project blog
Scott Berkun's website
QuickBooks and Beyond
QuickBooks Online Blog
QuickBooks and Your Business