Single-Tier Change Management: General Information

MYOB Advanced provides change order functionality, which you can use to track changes to project's budgeted and committed values and to control the profitability of every change initiated by a customer. A change order is a document for profitability analysis and an audit of changes to the project revenue budget, commitments, and budgeted costs. Change orders do not alter the original figures of a project directly. They are tracked in separate project budget columns.

Learning Objectives

In this chapter, you will learn how to do the following:

Configure a change order class
Create a change order for a project
Update the project budget with the change order
Review the changes made with change orders in the project budget
Prevent direct purchases for the project
Cancel the change order

Applicable Scenarios

You turn on the change order workflow for a project if you want to control changes made to the budgeted and committed values of the project budget and to track these changes at the budget level. To make changes to the project budget, you create change orders that do not alter the original budgeted and committed values.

You prevent the direct creation of purchase orders for the project if you want to create new purchase orders only by means of change orders to track these purchases as changes to the project budget.

Change Order Classes

A change order class defines which project data—the revenue budget, the cost budget, or commitments—can be adjusted with a change order of this class. You must specify a change order class for each change order you create, so you first need to configure change order classes on the Change Order Classes (PM203000) form.

To allow users to make changes to the project budget by using a change order of a particular class, on the Details tab of the Change Order Classes form, you select any combination of the following check boxes for the change order class:

Revenue Budget: To allow changes to the revenue budget
Cost Budget: To allow changes to the cost budget
Commitments: To allow changes to committed values. For more information, see Change Orders for Commitments: General Information.

Change order classes also make it possible to group change orders by their impact on projects. For example, you can segregate changes by class in reports to analyze which types of changes have the greatest impact on project profitability.

Change Order Workflow

To make it possible for users to track changes for a project by using change orders, you select the Change Order Workflow check box on the Summary tab of the Projects (PM301000) form for the project. You need to select this check box for each project for which you want to turn on the change order workflow.

Once you have selected this check box for a project, you can create a change order for the project on the Projects form by clicking Create Change Order on the More menu or clicking Create Change Order on the table toolbar of the Change Orders tab. The system creates a change order of the default class with the On Hold status and the project selected and opens it on the Change Orders (PM308000) form. If no default change order class is specified on the Projects Preferences (PM101000) form, you must select the change order class manually. You can override the default change order class, if needed.

In a change order with the On Hold status, on the Revenue Budget and Cost Budget tabs of the Change Orders form, you can increase and decrease values in existing project budget lines as well as create new budget lines. When you edit a change order line, you can see the following values: the original budgeted amount in the Original Budgeted Amount column; the released and draft change order amounts in the Previously Approved CO Amount and Other Draft CO Amount columns, respectively; and the revised budgeted amount in the Revised Budgeted Amount column.

When a change order is saved with the On Hold status, the Quantity and Amount values of a revenue budget line or cost budget line of the change order increase the Potential CO Quantity and Potential CO Amount of the corresponding revenue budget line or cost budget line of the project on the Projects form.

A change order can be printed or emailed to the customer. To print the change order, on the More menu of the Change Orders form, you click Print. To email the change order, on the More menu of the same form, you click Email.

When a change order is released, the Potential CO Quantity and Potential CO Amount of the corresponding budget lines are decreased and the Budgeted CO Quantity and Budgeted CO Amount are increased on the Projects form. The change order is assigned the Closed status.

Note: You can cancel a change order by clicking Cancel on the form toolbar of the Change Orders form to indicate that the changes will not be processed further. The system assigns the change order the Canceled status and decreases the potential CO values of the corresponding revenue budget lines and cost budget lines of the project on the Projects form.

Workflow of Managing Changes to the Project Budget

The following diagram illustrates the workflow of managing changes to the project budget.

Update of the Project Budget when a Change Order Is Released

When a change order is released, the budgeted values of the corresponding project on the Projects (PM301000) form are updated as follows:

If the project has a revenue budget line with the same project task, account group, and inventory item as a revenue budget line of the change order, the system updates the following columns of the revenue budget line of the project on the Revenue Budget tab, with the column values computed as noted:
- Budgeted CO Quantity = The total quantity of released change orders
- Budgeted CO Amount = The total amount of released change orders
- Revised Budgeted Quantity = Original Budgeted Quantity + Budgeted CO Quantity
- Revised Budgeted Amount = Original Budgeted Amount + Budgeted CO Amount
- Pending Invoice Amount = Revised Budgeted Amount * Completed (%) / 100 – Actual Amount – Draft Invoice Amount
  Note: As the result of the update of the Pending Invoice Amount, the amount can be a rational value, including a negative one.
If the project has a cost budget line with the same project task, account group, and inventory item as a cost budget line of the change order, the system updates the following columns of the cost budget line of the project on the Cost Budget tab, with the column values calculated as follows:
- Budgeted CO Quantity = The total quantity of released change orders
- Budgeted CO Amount = The total amount of released change orders
- Revised Budgeted Quantity = Original Budgeted Quantity + Budgeted CO Quantity
- Revised Budgeted Amount = Original Budgeted Amount + Budgeted CO Amount
If the project does not have a revenue or cost budget line with the same project task, account group, and inventory item as a revenue or cost budget line of the change order, the system creates a new revenue or cost budget line for the project based on the revenue or cost budget line of the change order. In this newly created budget line, the unit rate is copied from the corresponding change order line.