Project Series

Project Accounting

Project Accounting is a proven favourite with consultants, engineers and software developers. Virtually any professional service firm needing to track costs associated with projects in order to provide clients with punctual and accurate billing will benefit from Project Accounting. While many companies continue to use in-house spreadsheets and word processing methods, Project Accounting provides a total solution, seamlessly integrated with the entire Microsoft Great Plains financial management solution. Companies implementing Project Accounting are enjoying reduced clerical costs, improved cash flow and more cost-effective management decisions.

Project Accounting enables you to set up contracts and projects, enquire and report on project status and profitability and track labour, equipment, material, miscellaneous and employee expenses. To help you reduce data errors and increase consistency across all projects, Project Accounting allows you to set up "template" contracts, projects and budgets. Templates are precise definitions of contracts and projects that can be copied into any new contract and/or project. This is a tremendous time saver for complex projects that are time consuming to enter manually.

You can create highly detailed budgets based on financial periods, or you can make them as simple as entering a single cost category to track costs and revenues against. Once a project is defined and open, transactions can be recorded against it and changes to the initial budget can be made throughout the progress of the project when unforeseen modifications need to be made. The Periodic Budgeting feature assists finance and accounting in preparing cash budgets and revenue streams, as it provides a basis for measuring periodic performance. This functionality provides a more complete picture of actual costs compared to budgets for billable, non-billable and non-chargeable tasks.

Project Accounting supports three different project types: Time & Materials, Cost Plus and Fixed Fee Projects. In addition, users can determine how they want to recognise revenue on projects by selecting from any of the methods supported by the Project Accounting module. These methods include: Accrual (when billed or when performed), Percentage Completion (based on costs or quantity), Completed, or on a Rateable basis, which allows you to spread the revenue recognition across periods of time. In addition, when setting up projects, users have the opportunity to mix and match the project types and revenue recognition methods supported within the product, leaving room for very complex or simple project configurations.

Project Accounting alleviates one of the major pain points for professional service companies with efficient billing processes and flexible invoice formats. Frequency-based billing called Cycle Billing cuts down the amount of time it takes to review, edit and print invoices by automating the invoicing process. In addition, Progress Billing allows you to invoice clients based on the percentage completion of the project. Fifty invoice formats can be customised based on client needs; different invoice designs can be utilised for different customers. Integration to Receivables Management means that customer balances are managed from a central location and updated with each invoice that goes out the door.

When clients are billed lump sum amounts for service, project, retainer or retention fees, the Project Accounting Fees are flexible enough to allow fees of all types to be tracked to the project and invoiced on a scheduled basis to the client.

Time and Expense

With the Project Accounting internet based time and expenses entry application , a client does not have to pay for additional Microsoft Great Plains users to capture timesheets and expense reports. Time and Expense capture these transactions and integrate the information seamlessly into the financial system, meaning a one-line entry of time and expenses. Billing notes allow employees to document work done on timesheets and templates can be created to speed time and expense entry. As a final step, managers can approve timesheets either offline or via the Internet prior to posting.

Additional Features

Managing purchases: The Project Accounting Purchasing Feature provides a complete purchase order and receiving system for your company. Optimised for tracking project-specific purchases, Project Accounting also enables you to track all of your non-project expenses. Multiple purchase order formats give you a high degree of flexibility in defining purchase orders and user-definable options provide extensive control in tailoring the system to your purchasing methods. With a direct integration into Inventory Control, all purchase activity is shared with Payables Management, enabling you to enter information only once and deliver accurate, up to date information throughout your financial management solution.

Managing Inventory across projects: When you need to include inventory items in your projects, Project Accounting comes through with the ability to transfer inventory from Inventory Control to Project Accounting. Transfer in standard and serial/lot numbered items to a project for complete control over what will be used and when it will be available for billing.

Track utilisation of equipment: For example, if you own a large scanner that you wish to bill usage for, within projects, this equipment log would then be used to record the time that the scanner was used. Expense logs track expenses that will be billed but whose direct costs are recorded elsewhere: the classic example is copying charges. Many professional service firms charge for copying services, however, the costs of the paper, maintenance of the copier, the salary of the employee making the copies etc, are recorded elsewhere. The expense log allows you to track these billable charges.

Track Miscellaneous costs: Utilise Miscellaneous Cost entry within Project Accounting to track miscellaneous costs against projects. Subcontractor, overhead and non-quantity related expenses often need to be accounted for and tracking them within projects makes for better understanding of really how much certain projects' costs relate to the revenue they bring to the organisation.

Recognise Revenue when you want to: Project Accounting allows revenue recognition to be a separate process from invoicing, meaning that you choose when to recognise revenue based on GAAP requirements and your business needs.

Accurate Profitability, utilisation and realisation analysis: A daily challenge for project managers is tracking profitability, utilisation and realisation of projects. Is the project profitable or losing money? Are employees utilising their time at appropriate levels? What realisation of potential billings is being reached? Project Accounting helps you answer these questions with its comprehensive set of reports. Each report is customisable with easy to use report writing tools. Knowing the answers to these questions will help you make well-informed decisions.

Project Work in Progress Enquiry: Quick enquiries allow project managers to view project status at a high level, then drill back to the project and the cost categories for greater detail regarding costs to date, projected revenue and Profit/Loss information.

Flexible cost categories: Cost categories allow you to define all of the items you wish to track. Each cost category can be assigned to one of the five transaction types. You can define an unlimited number of cost categories for each transaction type, allowing you to track costs at whatever level you deem appropriate for your company. Several default parameters can be defined for each cost category.

General Ledger Capabilities

Project Accounting provides the most flexible general ledger interface in the industry. With Project Accounting you have complete control over WIP and Accrued/Percentage Completion Revenue tracking in the General Ledger. You can also assign project-specific sub accounts tailored to your account definition to override the default sub accounts. This control extends to each cost category in each individual budget, if necessary. Multiple cost categories can be assigned to the same General Ledger accounts, allowing you to simplify your General Ledger while still maintaining the reporting detail you require for project tracking. You no longer need to establish an overly complex chart of accounts just to accommodate project reporting.