Overview

Date rollup is a rule whereby the project start and due (end) dates are calculated automatically from those of its activities, similar to the project progress. Accordingly, disabling date rollup allows you to manually set the project dates and be sure that a change in activity dates will not affect them.

A common scenario is when you set a fixed deadline for a project. When you have date rollup enabled, it's important to ensure that none of the project's activities have due dates that go beyond this deadline. Additionally, there should be at least one activity in the project with an end date that matches the project's deadline exactly. The advantage of this approach is that even though the project's end date is considered a deadline, you can still have some activities that extend beyond it, meaning their end dates are later than the project's deadline on the timeline.

In the picture below, the project—named Project Rollup—has 4 activities, one parent and three subtasks. As can be seen, date rollup is disabled as no activity's start or end dates are aligned with that of the project. In other words, no activity is used to calculate the project dates.

Calculation rules 

When date rollup is enabled the following rules apply:

• Project (or parent activity) start and end dates are calculated based on activity (sub-activity) dates: the earliest date defines the project (parent activity) Start date, and the latest defines End date.
• Editing project (parent activity) duration (if there are activities (sub-activities) with set dates) is impossible.
• Editing the project (parent activity) Start date or End date moves the project (parent activity) and all its activities the same number of days back or forward on the timeline. For example, if you change the project start date from June 10 to June 13 (Friday to Monday), the start dates of all tasks will be moved one working day forward.
• If an activity has no children, changing the start date will move it, while changing the end date will change its duration (and vice versa).
• A dependency "locks" the appropriate date of the parent activity so its children's activities will define only its duration and the other date (start or end date, respectively). For example, a finish-to-start dependency will lock the start date of the activity.  

When date rollup is disabled the following rules apply:

• Project (parent activity) dates do not depend on the activity (sub-activity) dates: the activity can end later than the project, and start earlier.
• Editing the project (parent activity) duration is allowed even if there are activities (sub-activities) with set dates.
• Editing the project (parent activity) Start date moves the project (parent activity) and all activities the same number of days back or forward on the timeline. For example, if you change the project start date from June 10 to June 13 (Friday to Monday), the start dates of all its activities will be shifted one working day forward.
• Editing the project (parent activity) End date recalculates its duration, and vice versa, no matter if there are activities with set dates or not.
• If there is a dependency the appropriate (start or end) date is determined by it.

Global and selective date rollup

As you may need to disable date rollup for select projects only, Birdview PSA offers it both as a global and project setting. As to date rollup as a global setting, bear in mind that once enabled it will affect subsequent projects only, not the existing ones. In many cases, you will want to use selective, or project-level, date rollup only.

By default, date rollup is enabled for your whole account. To disable date rollup as a global setting, follow these steps:

1. Click through your profile > Company settings > Advanced settings.
2. Turn the "Dates rollup" toggle off.

To disable date rollup for a single project, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Activity center.
2. Hover over the project's name.
3. Click Details.
4. Click in the project details.
5. Click Disable dates rollup.

To enable date rollup for a single project, repeat the above procedure, but click Enable dates rollup.