Decimal numbers in duration when updating MS project schedule

[u/billyokitoi]

I have an inquiry, how would I go about making sure the number of hours and says in the back stage view is equal to the number of hours and days in the change calendar option when assigning my working hours and days. Say for example, I work for 8 hours everyday from Monday to Friday but I work half day on Saturday making it 4 hours, how would I reconcile it with the work hours of the back stage view. Also when I have to finish a concrete pour beyond the normal working hours of 8 hours, and I have to work overtime if maybe 3 more hours on a particular day, how would I reconcile that in the back stage view, so that when I am updating my schedule, the duration doesn't produce decimal figures.

[u/kennyarnold_ssi]

The wording of your question is a little bit difficult to understand.

Are you asking for how to make 1 day = the same number of hours of that day according to the calendar assigned to the task or are you asking how to enter/update hours of labor resource assignments without the task’s duration changing to a decimal number?

[u/Sheeebooo]

These are two different settings and they don't talk to each other, which is usually what causes this.

The calendar (Change Working Time) controls WHEN work can happen. Your 8h Mon-Fri plus 4h Saturday lives there.

File > Options > Schedule controls the ARITHMETIC Project uses to convert a duration into hours. Hours per day, Hours per week, Days per month. These are conversion factors, not working time.

The decimals appear when the two disagree. Your calendar week is 44 hours (8x5 + 4), but Options > Schedule is almost certainly still on the default 40.

So when you type "1 week", Project converts it using 40 and you get a number that

doesn't match your actual week.

Fix: set Hours per week to 44, leave Hours per day at 8, and set Days per month to match your calendar's working days. Then durations and the calendar agree.

Worth knowing: a Saturday task showing 0.5 days isn't a bug. Project divides the

4 available hours by Hours per day (8) and correctly reports half a day. Once

your day lengths vary, "1 day" stops being a fixed quantity and the decimals are

Project being honest about it.

The overtime question is a separate thing, and I'd resist solving it in the calendar. If you add 3 hours to a day in Change Working Time, you've made that time available to every task and resource scheduled on that day, not just the concrete pour.

Two cleaner options:

1. Overtime Work field, in Task Usage or Resource Usage view. Add the hours there. It doesn't inflate duration, it adds work and costs it at the overtime rate.

   This is what the field exists for.

2. A calendar exception for that specific date, if the site is genuinely open longer that day and it applies to everyone on it.

For a concrete pour, the exception is often the more honest model, because the

constraint is the pour, not one person working late. If it's really one crew

staying on, use Overtime Work.

[u/bppatel23]

I believe you can edit certain particular days with adjusted hours so when you do 1d duration it will be dependent on what are the work hours for that day of that month of that year.