Predecessor with Calendar Days on One Item

drallison

When invoicing, we use a NET30 policy where the payment is due in 30 calendar days. The remainder of our project timeline functions in working days (Monday - Friday). I want the "receive payment" step (line 31) in our timeline to be dependent on the "send invoice" step (line 62) and to appear in the tasks when the invoice is due.

Right now, in the predecessors column, the "receive payment" step reads "31FS + 30d" - but this isn't giving me an accurate date because it's 30 working days after the "send invoice" step when I want 30 calendar days. I don't want to change the project settings to include Saturday and Sunday as working days, because that will throw off the rest of the timeline. How can I get this one predecessor to count calendar days instead of working days?

Paul Newcome

It has been a while since I have tested it, but you should be able to put an "e" there before the number of days to indicate elapsed which will work as calendar days instead of working days.

"31FS + e30d"

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/765737-project-sheet-columns-start-date-end-date-duration-complete-and-predecessors#toc-duration

Genevieve P.

Hey @drallison

Paul is correct for if you're inputting days into a duration field, however there currently isn't a way to used elapsed time when you're adding a lag or lead time in a predecessor column.

Please feel free to add your vote and voice to this Product Idea: Elapsed Days in Predecessor Field

As an alternative, you could set up an interim task as the 30d task with a duration of e30d, as Paul noted, dependent on 31FS. Then have your current task link to this lag task instead of adding the days into the Predecessor field.

Cheers,

Genevieve

Paul Newcome

@Genevieve P. I didn't realize that it doesn't work with the lag/lead time. Do we have that documented anywhere? I've seen a few places where it references elapsed time with duration, but I haven't seen anywhere that it specifically says it doesn't work with lag/lead.

Genevieve P.

Hey @Paul Newcome

Good question - no, there isn't an article that runs through what can't be done in the Predecessor column, instead the documentation is only around what you can do.

Here's the article with a Note:

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/765727-enabling-dependencies-using-predecessors#toc-work-with-duration-and-predecessors

The documentation and "Note" around Elapsed time only appears with Duration, and the Predecessor documentation doesn't mention it (which then implies elapsed time is not a part of the Predecessor functionality).

Cheers,

Genevieve

Paul Newcome

@Genevieve P. Thank you!