MS Project - True day rate charge for accurate cost projection/tracking

Question

My issue is that of achieving accurate costing. I need to schedule a resource (equipment and people) that are charged at a day rate, however each resource may be assigned numerous
tasks in a single day. Regardless of whether the resource works a single hour or is utilised for the whole day the same rate applies. The issue that I have is I cannot get MS Project (2013) to 1) apply a single unit of the day rate total if there are ranging
hours worked in a single day, and 2) achieving 1) while having several separate tasks in a single day for the one resource i.e. it would ideal to have the day rate applied the once at the initial task for the day.
By way of example: The Resource is John. He will work on Task 1, and Task 2 at March 1st, and Task 3 and Task 4 at March 2nd. John will be within the nominal 8 hour working
day – as per default in MS Project – however tasks 1 & 2 are two hours while tasks 3 & 4 are three hours each and a single day rate is charged irrespective of working a ‘full’ (eight hour day).
Ideally, I would like to set-up the schedule so that I could easily alter some duration and the respective changes (flowing into the next day/week/hitch etc), occur automatically
and correctly, as it is common that I have over 1,000 rows of tasks in each project. I envisage that I need a macro to achieve the above and my script skills are non-existent. Help please….

Answer 1

Hamish3,
Here's a crude first cut at a macro to do what you want. Try it.
Enter the daily rate in the Standard Rate field on the Resource Sheet for each resource. To see the cost for each resource assignment, add the Cost1 field to the Resource Usage view. Note: the normal Cost field will not give accurate values and there is
no way to make it do so.
Sub DayTripper()
Dim t As Task
Dim a As Assignment
Dim r As Resource
Dim NumDa As Integer
Dim MPD As Single, PartDa As Single, PR As Single
Dim RR As String
Dim aSt As Date
MPD = ActiveProject.HoursPerDay * 60
For Each r In ActiveProject.Resources
    RR = r.PayRates(1).StandardRate
    PR = CSng(Mid(RR, 2, InStr(1, RR, "/") - 2))
    For Each a In r.Assignments
        If DateValue(a.Start) <> aSt Then
            NumDa = CInt(a.Work / MPD)
            PartDa = CDec(a.Work / MPD) - NumDa
            If PartDa > 0 Then NumDa = NumDa + 1
            a.Cost1 = NumDa * PR
            aSt = DateValue(a.Start)
        End If
    Next a
Next r
End Sub
John