Turning on/off the automatic assignment of Actual Cost when an activity is progressed.

Bryon,

The primary reason for this is that you are updating the activity's Duration % complete, and at the project window "Calculation" tab - you have "recalculate Actual Units and Costs when Duration % changes" ticked.

You may want on the same Calculation tab to set:

Add Actual to Remaining (to calculate At Completion)

Rather than

Subtract Actual from At completion (to calculate remaining)

Unticking "Calculate costs from units" in the resource dictionary means that the cost of a resource assignment is entered directly rather than calculated as the quantity x the prevailing rate

Auto Compute Actuals is to allow you to pretend that productivity is perfect and everything is on schedule.

run a global change

tools 

global change

new 

up top under Select subject area make sure that it says Activity Resource Assignments 

then on the right select Add

where calculate costs from units equals yes

then calculate costs from units = no

then on the right select change

then lower right committ 

David Kelly, you appear to be exactly on the mark.  Looking at the "Resource Assignments" portion of the "Calculations" tab in the Project view, indeed the difference between the projects that work properly and those that don't is the check box "Recalculate Actual Units and Cost when duration % complete changes".  I can't explain why it is different from project to project (after all, I built each of them), but now that I know about it, I can manage it.  I'll test it out soon.

Thank you for your insight!

Bryon,

I am not surpised that you find you have different setting in different projects. My solution is NEVER do "File :new"

Always make a new project by copying a template, which is just a project you have created for just this purpose. It can have the corporate WBS in it, posssibly all those standard activities like "Write safety case" "get three quotes" etc.

All the project level settings AND the scheduling options are copied as well.

David has an excellent Idea no need to reinvente the wheel every time. 

Create a project as a template  with all of the correct project settings

calendars including standard holidays 

standard codes to be used on all projects 

create 1 activity that has the resource that you are going to use with the correct settings

once this is correct use this to start a new project simply by coping it and changing the start date, data date and finish date for the project.