Project Accounting in MYOB Acumatica

In MYOB Acumatica, a project is defined as a one-time effort planned for execution within specific time and cost limits, and with an expected budget and revenue. A project can consist of one task or multiple tasks, and you can associate individual projects and tasks with workgroups. You can define projects and specify their settings, including defining tasks and populating projects with employees, resources, and equipment.

The project accounting functionality helps you monitor and manage costs and budget, and predict expected revenue. You can associate any entered document with a specific project, which ensures that all project-related activity will be accounted for. You can manage projects of varying complexity across different project types and industries. The following sections briefly describe the specifics of project accounting in MYOB Acumatica.

Integration with Other Functional Areas

Integration of projects with other MYOB Acumatica functional areas makes it possible to maintain complete project information as the project-related data is entered into the system. Integration with accounts payable and inventory and order management gives users the ability to track project costs and re-bill them with or without a premium and manage billing information. Because employee time and expenses can be tracked in projects, users can track labor costs related to specific projects and bill the employee labor.

Labor Time and Cost Accounting

MYOB Acumatica supports labor accounting through the attribution of labor hours to specific projects and tasks within projects. To this end, the time that employees spend on projects is recorded in time cards.

Flexible Budget Tracking

You can easily compare actual project costs with the original and revised budgets. As a project progresses, you can also continuously track budget execution, including whether actual costs match the budget, and act appropriately by either adjusting expenditures or revising the budget. In MYOB Acumatica, you can also implement continuous budgeting.

Fixed-Price and Cost-Based Projects

MYOB Acumatica supports two types of projects: fixed-price and cost-based. With fixed-price projects, the price for the project is defined at the beginning of the project and is not changed until the end of the project. With cost-based projects, the final price of the project depends on the overall cost of fulfilling the project, and the costs may be invoiced again with or without a premium. You can also run projects with a cap.

Work-in-Progress Accounting

When maintaining project accounting in MYOB Acumatica, you can track the work in progress (WIP) performed in the project. Work in progress is the amount of work that was performed but not yet invoiced. By using this functionality, you can use for billing only those project expenses that are relevant for specific billing periods.

External and Internal Projects

By using the project accounting functionality, you can manage both external and internal projects. Generally, the scope of internal projects is limited to the physical and organizational boundaries of an organization; these projects serve the needs of the organization and never produce any revenue. On the other hand, an external project is revenue-driven, and the key objective is balancing costs and income to make sure the organization remains profitable, while meeting project goals and maximizing customer satisfaction.

Flexible Rate Calculation

By using the flexible rate calculation engine in MYOB Acumatica, you can implement complex pricing and accrual models that require the consideration of a large number of parameters. With this project management engine, you can differentiate rates depending on the project, task, account group, and employee class. You can even define different rates for specific dates or date ranges.

Billable Revenue Tracking

You can track future revenues as a project progresses from task to task. By using MYOB Acumatica, you can accommodate complex pricing models with a high level of granularity.

Templates for Projects and Tasks

If your company routinely performs standardized projects (for instance, the building of standard houses), you do not need to create these projects from scratch and each time go through the entire procedure of defining a new project and its tasks. Instead, you can create templates for standard projects and tasks and use them each time you start a new project. For details, see Creating Project Templates and Common Tasks.

Commitment Tracking

MYOB Acumatica supports tracking purchase orders by project as the project cost commitments. These commitments affect the execution status of a project. A user can track the budget and actual amounts of a project, as well as the original commitments that remain open. For details, see Tracking Cost Commitments.

Pro Forma Invoice Workflow

You can enable pro forma invoice workflow for a particular project to agree upon details with a customer before sending the final accounts receivable invoice. You can review and modify the draft invoice and reach agreement about the document with all required parties before the accounting team prepares the final accounts receivable invoice with all information copied from the pro forma invoice. With this process, the company can minimize corrections of accounts receivable documents. For details, see Pro Forma Invoices: General Information.

Automated Project Billing and Invoicing

As a project progresses from milestone to milestone or when it is completed, you can define the project to automatically generate billing information and generate invoices for customers. This saves time, reduces errors, and helps you improve the cash flow in your organization.

Project Security

MYOB Acumatica provides you with the variety of options that can be used to set up security of specific projects. For more information, see Project Creation and Processing: Project Security Configuration.