What is the Status Date?

On the Project Information dialog box (Project | Project Information), there is a field called Status Date. Since many users don't know the purpose of this field, we'll explain one of its functions in this tip.

The Status Date lets you enter a date that represents the last date you fully updated your project with status or Actual Work information from your resources. Things such as Earned Value use this date for calculating its values. The ability to set a date other than Today for use in these calculations is important because almost no plan is updated up to the minute.

For example, if timesheets are due on Friday, you're probably doing well if you have them all in and processed into your plan by Monday afternoon. (Even if you use an automated or Web-based timesheet system, this takes time.) So even if you get the information into your plan by Monday afternoon, the data is already three days old. In a case like this, set the Status Date to Friday because that is when the information you insert is current. This way, Earned Value and Microsoft Project Progress Lines will not show the days between Friday and the following Monday when there was no work done.

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