It is known that when a project enters an execution stage, the Cost/Benefits Actuals are being tracked on each execution granularity period. This has an impact on the Forecast financial periods as well, meaning that once a project enters execution, Forecast financial values can be entered only for future periods (current and past periods are being locked).

Due to different reasons, users might come to a point where they want to enter values in a Forecast financial period that is locked. This can be done using two workarounds. 

I. The first workaround is useful if the project you are working on has the “Overwrite  Forecast with Actual Cost” (or “Overwrite  Forecast with Actual Benefits”, depending on the situation) setting enabled. Just follow the next steps in order to update a locked Forecast financial period with new data.

1. Go to Cost/Benefits Actuals and re-open the financial period you want to update for Forecast;

2. In the re-opened Actuals period enter the values which you want to see in Forecast;

3. Submit and Approve the updated period; due to the setting “Overwrite  Forecast with Actual Cost” (or “Overwrite  Forecast with Actual Benefits”) the values you entered in the Actuals period will be copied in Forecast for the same period.

II. The second workaround applies to projects that do not have the settings “Overwrite  Forecast with Actual Cost” or “Overwrite  Forecast with Actual Benefits” enabled. These are the steps you need to take in order to use this workaround( we will assume that we want to update a locked period from Cost Forecast):

1. Go to Budget Cost web part and create a version with the current budget; it is very important that the Budget Cost web part mode is set to Admin (this will enable the “Copy to Forecast” button from the ribbon);

2. If the Cost Granularity is different than the Execution Granularity, change the first one so that both are the same; for example, if the granularity from Budget Cost is set to Years and the Granularity for Actuals and Forecast is set to Months, change the granularity for Budget Cost to Months; if the granularities are the same, continue to step number 3;

3. Delete all values from the Budget Cost financial grid;

4.  Fill the financial grid from Budget Cost web part with the values you want to have in Cost Forecast; it is important to enter values for all periods not just the period you want to update; for example, if you only want to change the financial values on one month, in Budget Cost copy the values that currently exist in Cost Forecast for all months and only change the values for that specific month;

5. Use the “Copy to Forecast” button from the contextual ribbon of the Budget Cost web part;

6. If at step number 2. you changed the Cost Granularity, at this time you must change it back to it’s original value; if this is not the case continue with step number 7;

7. Now that the Cost Forecast is updated with the values you just copied from Budget Cost it is time to restore the version of the budget that you created at step number 1.

This second workaround can be used in case of Benefits Forecast periods as well, with only one setback: versions cannot be created for benefits so the values from Planned Benefits that will be deleted at the begining of the workaround will have to be restored manually after Forecast Benefits have been updated.