User role:  ✔  Financial Administrator

Upload the baseline forecast of your project using the Bulk Edit functionality.

In this article, you will learn:

         ✔ how to access the bulk edit functionality.

         ✔ the steps to update the project baseline forecasts.

         ✔ the rules that are applied when you upload updates to the project baseline forecasts.

The bulk edit functionality provides financial administrators with an easy way to upload you project baseline forecast budget. 

It also provides a way to upload the project full year forecast as the project baseline forecast without having to manipulate any data.

This article uses Baseline terminology as this is the default settings for this field. Please contact your support team if you need this label to be changed to be better aligned to the terminology used in your organisation.

How to access the Project Baseline Forecast Bulk Edit Functionality? 

The Project Baseline Forecasts Bulk Edit functionality is available from:

• Project Dashboard/Watchlist pages. Bulk Edit will export only those projects that are in your filtered view, so make sure the filters applied include all the projects you need to edit!
• The Project Workspace.

Accessing Bulk Edit from Project Dashboard/Watchlist

To access Bulk Edit from a dashboard, select Tools (top right of the page) and select Bulk Edit.

Accessing Bulk Edit from Project Workspace

The Bulk Edit function can also be accessed from the project workspace page by selecting the Bulk Edit option (under the Tools section) on the left navigation menu.  

Steps to update project baseline forecasts

Step 1: Download the data file

• Select Baseline Forecast on the left of the Bulk Edit dialog. 
• Select the date range that you want to download the financials for. 
  • The date range is set to This Financial Year by default but you change it by selecting another value from the drop down list.
• Select one of these two options:
  • Download Baseline Budget
    • Use this option if you want to download the current baseline forecast for the project.
  • Download Full Year Forecast
    • Use this option if you want to upload the project full year forecast as the project baseline forecast. The file being downloaded will contain the project full year forecast in the format of baseline forecast so that you just have to upload the file without making any changes.
• Click on Download.

Step 2: Edit the data file

Make the required changes to the file that you downloaded.

If you are uploading the project full year forecast as baseline forecast, then you do not need to make any changes, you can just upload the file directly.

See the File Column Description section for a full description of each column.

Step 3: Upload the data file

When you are happy with your changes, select UPLOAD in the Bulk Edit dialog and select the file you want to upload

The progress bar will indicate when the upload process is completed and if any errors occurred during the upload process, they will be listed below the progress bar. 

Remember - changes will only be applied if you have the right permissions to the projects to make financial changes. If you do not have permission to edit the projects included in your data file, the changes will not be applied and an error will be reported.

Data File Column Description

The Excel template file for Project Baseline bulk edit is attached to this article.

Baseline Forecast upload rules

• The row will be skipped if the following mandatory values are missing: 
  • ProjectId OR ProjectRef
  • Month 
  • Expense Category 
  • Expense Type 
  • Value 
• Either ProjectRef or ProjectId columns must have a value to uniquely identify the project to be updated.
  • If the ProjectId column has a value, then the process will search for a project with the specified project ID. If no projects are found, then the row will be skipped. 
  • If the row has no ProjectID value but a ProjectRef value is specified, then the upload process will search for a project with the given external reference. If no projects are found, then the row will be skipped. If more than one project are found, the row will be skipped too. 
• The Expense Category and Expense type value combination must have been set up in the application for the record to be processed.
• To following process is applied to save the baseline forecast values
  • The user uploading the file must have the rights to edit the project.
  • The values of the rows that have the same project / expense category / expense type / month combination are added up.  
  • All existing baseline records for the project / month combination are deleted irrespective of the expense category and expense type values.
  • The aggregated amount is saved for the project / expense category / expense type / month combination with the date set to the 1st day of the month.