Import Project Fee

This feature allows for the importing of Project Fee information into the Unanet system.

Within one project fee import file, an Administrator can import project fee data for one to many projects, across multiple organizations if desired.

Note that for backwards compatibility, a single project fee factor method, fee factor type and fee factor can be managed via the Project Import. In order to manage multiple project fee entries, this project fee import is available.

Roles

This screen is available to users having any of the following roles: Administrator and P&R Administrator

License

This feature is available with any Unanet edition.

Performance Tip Note: Depending on the number of users in your installation and other factors such as the overall performance of your platform, the activity of importing one or many files may take up to several minutes. Should this be the case with your installation, you may want to consider running these processes at non-peak times to minimize database contention.

Topics covered on this help page include:

Import File Record Layout (field by field descriptions)
Import File Format (note about csv layout and option to import a subset of columns using header values)
Excel Template (spreadsheet template containing column headings)
Import Screen (invoking the import via the user interface)

Import File Record Layout

IMPORTANT: Note that there are multiple places within this documentation that say you MUST use double quotes for the strings in your import. If you are working in Excel, Excel will provide the double quotes and thus you do not need to add them in manually. Manually adding double quotes within Excel would result in multiple sets of double quotes in the resulting .csv file and thus cause an error (should you attempt to import that resulting file). Please see Excel Tips for more information.

		Field Header Name	Required/Comments
1	A	Project_Org_Code	ALWAYS REQUIRED. This code uniquely identifies the Organization to which the project belongs. This value must match an existing Project Organization Code value defined in your system. If the Organization you are trying to import does not already exist in the database, the entire record will be rejected.
2	B	Project_Code	ALWAYS REQUIRED. This project code identifies the project to which this Project Labor Category belongs. This value must match an existing Project Code value defined in your system. If the Project you are trying to import does not already exist in the database, the entire record will be rejected.
3	C	Fee_Method	ALWAYS REQUIRED. This field is used to specify which fee calculation method is to be used for calculating a Project Accounting related fee for this project. The values supplied in this field must match an existing Fee Method in your system (defined by an Administrator on the Admin >> Setup >> Fee Calculation Method screen). If the Fee Method you are trying to import does not already exist in the database, the entire record will be rejected. This field is used in conjunction with the Fee_Factor field. For each project, a Fee_Method can only appear once. You can use the special tag !BLANK! to remove an existing entry in this field.
4	D	Fee_Factor_Type	This field is used to indicate whether the value supplied in the Fee_Factor field is to be treated as a numeric factor or a percentage. Valid values include P or N (if not provided, P is the default for a new entry). P - Percent -- amounts will be multiplied by a factor of .10 N - Numeric -- amounts will be multiplied by a factor of 10
5	E	Fee_Factor	REQUIRED ON ADD. This field is used to specify a value related to Project Accounting fee calculations. This value is required if a value is supplied for Fee_Method and is used in conjunction with the Fee_Factor_Type field to determine if this is a factor or percent. The values for this field can range from -999 to 999 (with up to 2 decimal places of precision). You can use the special tag !BLANK! to remove an existing entry in this field.
6	F	Fixed_Fee_Amount	When provided, the cumulative fee for a project will be limited to this amount. This amount can be positive or negative. When supplying a Fixed Fee Amount, the system will continue to produce all of the regular transactions for the fee amounts but will also generate additional transactions (which we refer to as Fixed Fee Cap Adjustments) that will reflect a reduction in the amounts ensuring the totals do not exceed the Fixed Fee Amount. Each time the posting process is run for a project, the amounts and these options are checked and the system will regenerate appropriate transactions (either adding more or reversing out more depending on the current values). This will accommodate changing the values over time. Note that when a project is marked as Completed, if the total value of the Fixed Fee Amount has yet to be earned, the system will generate the necessary posting entries to allow for the balance of the Fixed Fee Amount to be earned. This is an optional field. You can use the special tag !BLANK! to remove an existing entry in this field. This field accepts a numeric value up to 13 positions to the left of the decimal and 2 positions to the right, and can be either positive or negative.
7	G	Delete	This field can be used to trigger the system to delete a Project Fee entry . In order for the delete to happen, you must include the following text string !DELETE! in this field.

Note: Check out the Unanet Data model for specific field data types, lengths, and other attributes.

Import File Format

The file to import must be saved in a comma delimited format. The fields can be enclosed in double quotes -- which would be particularly necessary should the data being imported contain commas.

Importing a Sub-Set of Columns using a Field Header Record

If you are not using the default column layout sequence as defined above, you must include a header record (prefixed with an asterisk *), containing the column Header Names for those columns you are including in the import file (to indicated what data is contained in each column). The specific Header Names for each column are listed in the table above.

Example:

*Project_Org_Code,Project_Code,Fee_Method,Delete
Org1,Proj1,Method1,!DELETE!

Excel Template

You can create the comma delimited import file with any number of tools. For those interested in using an Excel spreadsheet to create the file, you can download an Excel Template with predefined headers and required fields noted.

See the Excel Tips regarding the use of double quotes and more.

Import Screen

The Import Project Fee screen simply looks like:

Field Descriptions:

Field	Description
Type of Import	Select the appropriate import type from the list of available types of imports.
File to Import	Enter (or browse for) the file that you would like to import.
Output Options	Specify the level of detail included in the output.

The import process is triggered by pressing the Import button. All Warnings and Error messages are written to the screen and can then be saved if desired. While some line items may be found invalid and rejected, the remaining line items will be successfully imported and saved in the database. The rejected line items will be written out to a file on the Unanet server as well as displayed at the bottom of the user feedback screen. The rejected record file name will be UnanetProjectFeeImportErrorxxx, where xxx is a randomly generated number. The file will be placed in the Unanet temporary directory (which is defined by the Temp Directory (Fully Qualified Directory Name) (unanet.temp_directory) Unanet property).