If you
find something Macroscope can't do, it might not be a bug! We've
found that an effective budgeting process can break down with
too much information, so we built Macroscope with a few key limitations:
-
Project managers can learn to estimate the total time that
a project will take, but trying to estimate the timing
of every individual task is usually not worth the effort.
Team members might take a little more time on some tasks
and a little less on others, making a mess of schedules
but keeping the budget on track. Since the latter is
what ultimately matters, Macroscope focuses on budgeting
and doesn't address scheduling -- freeing project managers
from endless reorganization of the work plan.
-
Actual hours are logged by users, but planned hours are
allocated to roles. This means that some reports don't
compare planned to actual hours in ways that you might
expect. But the advantage is that you have great flexibility
in changing staffing on a project, can keep employee salaries
confidential, and can receive a more accurate picture
of project costs when employees at different salary levels
are contributing.
-
Timesheets aren't saved as sets of tasks that can be carried
over into subsequent weeks. This arrangement usually
requires that timesheets be configured as a separate
step from logging hours, which forces users to go back
and forth between multiple pages if they need to log
hours to a task they hadn't planned for. Instead, we
designed timesheets to be configured easily as you fill
them out, allowing team members to spend less overall
time logging their hours.
-
Macroscope automatically adds a proportional amount of
your project costs to cover your organization's overhead
costs. This might cause some
confusion when you look at your reports, but it helps
ensure that the entire organization, not just individual
projects, are profitable. If you don't have overhead
costs or don't wish to use this feature, you can set
the overhead rate to 0 on the Account admin page.
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