Setting Up Cost Resources

The third and final type of resource that you can use in Project is the cost resource. You can use a cost resource to represent a financial cost associated with a task in a project. While work resources, such as people and equipment, can have associated costs (hourly rates and fixed costs per assignment), the sole purpose of a cost resource is to associate a particular type of cost with one or more tasks. Common types of cost resources might include categories of expenses you’d want to track on a project for accounting purposes such as travel, entertainment, or training. Like material resources, cost resources do no work and have no effect on the scheduling of a task. However, after you assign a cost resource to a task and specify the cost amount per task, you can then see the cumulative costs for that type of cost resource, such as total travel costs in a project.

1. In the Resource Sheet, click the next empty cell in the Resource Name column.

2. Type Travel and press .

3. In the Type field, click the down arrow, select Cost, and press .