Weekly Dynamic: PA Cost Category Naming Best Practice

In the Dynamics GP Project Accounting module, Cost Category names can't be duplicated across transaction types. This means that you can't have a Timesheet category called "Labor" for employees and Miscellaneous Log cost category also called "Labor" for contractors. A common best practice is to use a short abbreviation in the naming of the cost category to identify the type of transaction. In our example this would result in cost categories of TS_Labor and ML_Labor.

A second advantage is that if you use the GP Project Accounting terminology as part of the naming convention, then everyone gets used to the terminology quickly. This means that EL for equipment log is better than EQ since Equipment Log is the actual GP term used. We commonly use:

• TS - Timesheet
• EE - Employee Expense
• EL - Equipment Log
• ML - Miscellaneous Log
• PM - Purchase Material

There are other benefits to this like easy recognition of the transaction type in Smartlists and other reports. Cost Categories are powerful, they get more powerful when you put just a little bit of intelligence into the naming convention.