Costpoint Timesheet: Employee Cannot Charge to a Project

How to diagnose a rejected charge line

1. 1Copy the exact message and note the project, task, account, organization, pay type and date on the failing line. Different messages point at different validations, so the text matters.
2. 2Open the project in Project Setup and confirm the project (and the specific level you are charging) has a status that allows charging, and that the project start and end dates cover the timesheet date.
3. 3Check the charging flags on the project level, such as whether the level is chargeable at all. A summary level in the project structure usually cannot take direct charges; only the lowest chargeable level can.
4. 4Verify the account and organization combination. The project's account group and org must allow the labor account the employee's default or the line uses; an org that is not valid for the project is a common cause.
5. 5Check the employee record in Employee Maintenance: labor category, home organization, labor group and any project or charge restrictions that apply to that person.
6. 6Confirm the timesheet period is open and the employee is not blocked by a policy such as a cutoff or an already-approved or posted timesheet for the same date.
7. 7Fix the master data, not the timesheet, if the rule is wrong. If the rule is right, have the employee charge the correct project or have a supervisor request a change through your normal approval flow.

Project status and level structure

-- Read-only sanity check against your reporting database or a Costpoint view.
-- Table and column names can differ by release; confirm in your data dictionary first.
SELECT proj_id, proj_name, active_fl, proj_start_dt, proj_end_dt
FROM proj
WHERE proj_id LIKE 'ABC-1234%'
ORDER BY proj_id;

Common pitfalls

• !Fixing the symptom by widening a project's validity so everyone can charge it. That weakens the cost-allocation controls an auditor expects and is hard to unwind.
• !Re-keying the line with a different project to get past the error, which mischarges time and creates a correction later.
• !Testing as an administrator. Administrators often bypass restrictions that apply to normal users, so the problem seems to disappear.
• !Forgetting that an approved or posted timesheet cannot be edited directly; changes must go through your correction process.
• !Extending a project end date without checking the funding and ceiling limits that go with the modification.