CFO.com Project Management Best Practices

In an interesting article, CFO.com examines project management best practices and how they relate to CFO managed projects in particular.

Number of results columns doesn't match table definition errors in Personal Data Keeper - Microsoft Dynamics GP Support Blog

Pam Peterson of Microsoft digs into an error where the Number of results columns doesn't match table definition errors in Personal Data Keeper

Server Error in Application in Project Time and Expense in Business Portal for Microsoft Dynamics GP - Microsoft Dynamics GP Support Blog

Shannon Aune looks at Server Error in Application in Project Time and Expense in Business Portal for Microsoft Dynamics GP

Weekly Review: Turning a Project into a Fixed Asset

A common request is to turn a Project from the Project Accounting module, into a Fixed Asset in the Fixed Asset module. There is no native functionality to do this and based on my conversations with the Dynamics GP team, it's not going to happen so you might as well understand the workaround and it looks like this:

1) Create a Miscellaneous Log Cost Category for Fixed Assets pointing the Contra Account to the FA Clearing account and the Cost/Expense account to wherever you are collecting the project costs (a WIP account, a project FA WIP account, etc.). You'll be doing a negative misc log so the cost collection location will be credited and contra (FA Clearing) will be debited.

2) Once the project is ready to become a Fixed Asset, process a negative Misc Log transaction using the Fixed Asset Cost Category to remove an amount equal to the total cost of the project.

a. This setup makes it easy to exclude the FA Cost Category when analyzing project costs while still leaving the project at zero

b. This process provides a transactional audit trail to show that the project was closed out and moved to Fixed Assets

3) Create a Fixed Asset. The GL Transfer mechanism will move the costs from the FA clearing account to the appropriate Fixed Asset account.

The reality is that the number of fields that would actually transfer from a project is really small, single digits small. The complexities of creating a Fixed Asset from a project become large very fast. For instance, how do you deal with multiple assets from a single project, complete assets but incomplete projects, partial capitalization of a project, combining Cost Categories for capitalization, etc. The benefits of creating something to manage this are far outweighed by pain of dealing with all of the possible scenarios. Realistically, this is best handled through a process like the one described here.

Posted by Mark at 6/01/2009 02:23:00 PM

WAQAS BUTT - Microsoft Dynamics ERP'S Blog: Dynamics GP Project Accounting Reports - Project Summaries Sheet

Waqas Butt adds to his Dynamics GP Project Accounting reports with Project Summaries Sheet.

Info on Project Accounting General Entries

In a new tip, Frank Hamelly takes a look at general entries in Project Accounting. The title is Project Accounting Accruals and Frank uses an accrual example to demonstrate how to use Misc. Log entries.

Weekly Dynamic: Retention on Time and Material Projects in Project Accounting

Retention (also commonly called Retainage) is a process where amounts (typically a flat percentage) are held back each sales invoice until a project is complete as a form of performance guarantee. Typically, once the final project milestones are met and approved, the vendor has to submit a final invoice to bill the amounts that have previously been retained.

By default, the Project Accounting module in Dynamics GP 10 supports Retention for Fixed Price project only. This is the most common scenario. But, I recently ran across a client who needed retention functionality for Time and Materials type projects. If all of the elements are there, this can be accomplished without any customization.

In a nutshell, the Trade Discount functionality, if it is not being used elsewhere, can effectively masquerade for retention. Here is how you can make it work.

Setup:

• Set the Discount Percentage on the Project Billing Settings screen to the retention percentage.
• Set the Trade Discount account in Posting Accounts to a balance sheet account to hold the retained amounts.
• Create a Retention Cost Category to hold the final billing of retention. 
• Trade Discount will need to be renamed as Retention on any related invoices
  

Billing:

• Process billing transactions normally using cycle biller or billing entry. GP will automatically subtract the trade discount crediting revenue and debiting the retention account.

Project Completion:
Billing retention is typically a bit of a production. Normally there are significant contractual requirements and signatures required before final billing can be completed. Once that is done, there are few things required in Project Accounting to bill the final amounts.

• Use a Smartlist to obtain the total amount retained using the Trade Discount field from Billing.
  
• Process a billable Miscellaneous Log transaction for zero cost.
• Remove the Discount Percentage prior to final billing to avoid calculating retention on the retention amount.
• Alternatively, zero out the Trade Discount amount on the final billing prior to posting.
• Create an invoice via Billing Entry and set the amount to be billed equal to the amount retained.
• Print and post normally

Reporting:

• When reviewing projects, the amounts retained are ready visible in each billing transaction in the Trade Discount field.
• The retained amounts also appear in Smartlists as Trade Discounts. In Smartlist favorites this field can easily be renamed to Retention.

While less common in T&M projects, retention can be required there as well. Assuming that the Trade Discount field is available, this simple workaround allows accounting for retention on T&M projects without customization.

Dynamics GP and Simple Solutions

Christina Phillips has a new post up on some issues she had with Project Accounting. It's a great example of how sometimes the best solutions are the simplest solutions.

Dynamics GP Project Accounting Retainers

The DynamicsBlogger site has a nice Q&A up covering Retainer Fee transactions in Project Accounting for Dynamics GP.

More Project Accounting Cost Allocation

You'll remember back in October that I took a look at the new Project Accounting allocation functionality provided by Feature Pack 1 for Dynamics GP 10. Well if you want more info, Christina Phillips walks through another example over at Dynamics GP land.

Weekly Dynamic: Use Tax, Landed Cost and Project Accounting

So you are running Project Accounting. You purchase materials for your project and you want to include use tax paid for those line items in the appropriate project. Well, with Dynamics GP 10 it's not all that hard to do. I'll be putting out Use Tax paper soon with every last detail but for those of you with a little experience, here are the steps.

• Run the Use Tax amount through AP
• Apply this amount to a PO receipt via Landed Cost
• Landed cost can be used to calculate the Use Tax amount and apply it to line items based on the value of the line item.
• If you apply the line items directly to a project, the landed cost total flows through to Project Accounting.
• If you simply post the amounts to inventory with landed cost applied, that cost flows through to Project Accounting when transferring inventory amounts to PA using the inventory transfer functionality.

The beauty of using the landed costs functionality is that it flows all the way through to whatever module is downstream and that included Project Accounting.

Convergence Wrap Up

I've got a bunch of posts from other people to catch up on so I'm going to wrap up some of my own Convergence coverage here and move on.

• We finished as the number 1 rated concurrent session for all of Convergence, not just GP. We were also the number 4 rated speakers overall at Convergence. We're proud of this not because we were good but because it says we delivered value and we made it fun.
• The 50 tips gets a semi-permanent link at the top right of the page. Plenty of people have already gone looking for it.
• The FRx situation is a big mess. Other folks have better coverage and I point to some relevant articles next.
• Word reports in GP 11 are very cool. Except if you look hard and ask some tough questions you'll find that they are still based on an underlying Report Writer report so don't let your Report Writer skills lapse.
• Email features in GP 11 look very good as do BP dashboards, and Customer/Vendor portals.
• Some (most?) of the features that we want in Project Accounting for GP 11 are not expected to be in there.
• Extender is getting some great new functionality and a price increase to go with it so buy before August.
• Microsoft financing opportunities are there if you want to use Bill and Steve's money instead of yours. Think no payments for 6 months.

Project Accounting Customer Frustration

Over at Dynamics GP Land, Steve Endow is so frustrated with connecting customers to Project Accounting that he has a 2 part blog entry on it! The core issue is that Project Accounting uses a behind the scenes 5 digit alias to connect back to the customer number and it doesn't work the way you would expect it to. In most cases, this is invisible to the user but every once in a while when reloading PA or installing things later it's possible to break this link.

The fix is easy for one customer, open the customer and click the project button. That's not terribly useful when there are thousands of them. We have a script internally to deal with this and it's nice to see Steve publishing a fix as well.

Weekly Dynamic Project Accounting GL Accounts

This week's Weekly Dynamic segment is a little different. I'm pointing you to my I.B.I.S. ERP Blog post on GL Accounts in Project Accounting where Ross Carlson and I have created an example of posting flows for Project Accounting. This Excel based template includes examples, journal entries and T-Accounts to help people understand Project Accounting's posting flow. We've tackled both Time and Materials and Fixed Price projects. There's even a place to put in your own accounts to help figure out what accounts go where.

Our examples are complete but don't cover every possible scenario. The goal was to take the whiteboard work we do and make it a litte more permanent.

Weekly Dynamic: Project Accounting Reference Transaction

There is no way to do a negative transaction in Dynamics GP Project Accounting for transaction types other than Misc. Log transactions. Or is there? For Timesheets, Equipment Logs and Employee Expense you are stuck making adjusting transactions to reverse the original entry. Or are you?

Are you intrigued yet? Many people don't know that you can create a "Referenced" transaction in Project Accounting that allows you adjust a posted transaction.

For example, in a PA Timesheet transaction (Transactions->Project->Timesheet Entry), instead of leaving Transaction Type as STANDARD, click the drop down and change it to REFERENCED. In Reference Doc Number, enter or lookup the timesheet transaction to adjust. In each line, select the project and cost category id to adjust. You can process negative amounts for this line but you can't subtract an amount that is greater than the original amount.

Adjustments can go both ways. You can subtract time from one project and add it to another for example. The original transaction does need to be posted, otherwise, just adjust the unposted original.

Referenced Transactions are available in Timesheet, Equipment and Employee Expense transactions. Inventory transactions have Return functionality instead and Miscellaneous logs allow negative.

Weekly Dynamic: Restart Project Accounting

Project Accounting setup can be tough to get right the first time in Dynamics GP. Sometimes a company simply wants to dump their existing Project Accounting implementation and start over without ripping out the rest of their GP implementation. Maybe they only implemented PA for internal projects and now that setup won’t properly support external projects.

There are lots of considerations to take into account before doing this. It is not something to be done lightly. Make sure you understand the implications of this. Those implications are beyond the scope of this post. Make sure that you consult with your partner before doing this. This can also be useful if you are testing PA in a test company and want to start over completely. If you’ve done your homework and you are ready to restart Project Accounting, here is how you do it. In SQL Server Management Studio:

1. Delete DYNAMICS..DB_Upgrade where PRODID = 258 and db_name = 'Company ID '
Use the company database ID for your company.

2. Delete DYNAMICS..DU000020 where PRODID = 258 and companyID = x
where “x” = the companyID from DYNAMICS..SY01500

3. DROP TABLE PA10702
run against the company database


Yes, it really is that simple. After you log in the next time, you’ll get a message that Project Accounting is not setup and PA looks just like it does after a fresh install. Sometimes a fresh start is easier than you think.

[H.T. to Ross Carlson of I.B.I.S. for figuring this out while we were working on resetting a PA test company]

Project Accounting Miscellaneous Logs

Steve Chapman and Rose Business Solutions take a look at Miscellaneous Logs in Project Accounting.