Committed Costs: General Information

MYOB Advanced supports the tracking of purchase orders for each project as project cost commitments, which gives you the ability to control purchases made for projects. When the commitments are created, the system uses them to populate the cost budget for the corresponding project, project task, inventory item, and account group.

Learning Objectives

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

  • Set up the tracking of project commitments in the system
  • Create commitments by creating a purchase order for a project
  • Review how the commitments affect the project cost budget during the processing of the purchase order

Applicable Scenarios

You set up commitment tracking if you want to distinguish purchases within the cost budget of a project. When you process a purchase order with detail lines related to the project, the system tracks this purchase as a commitment to the project and updates the cost budget of the project with the purchased services and materials. The commitment values are shown in separate columns in the cost budget.

Tracking of Committed Costs for Projects

If the Internal Cost Commitment Tracking check box is selected on the General tab (General Settings section) of the Projects Preferences (PM101000) form, the system tracks project-related purchase orders as commitments to these projects and exposes these commitments on the Commitments (PM306000) form.

Note: If the Construction feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form, the system also tracks subcontracts as commitments to projects. For more information about processing subcontracts, see Subcontracts: General Information.

The system creates a commitment for a purchase order line in the amount of the Ext. Cost of the line and updates the committed values of the corresponding budget line of a project on the Cost Budget tab of the Projects (PM301000) form if all of the following conditions are met on the Purchase Orders (PO301000) form:

  • The type of the purchase order is Normal, Drop-Ship or Project Drop-Ship.
  • The status of the purchase order is Pending Printing, Pending Email, or Open.
  • The purchase order line specifies the project and the applicable project task (and, optionally, the cost code).

On the Cost Budget tab of the Projects form, for each budget line, the system displays the total values of all the commitments that are associated with the same project, project task, account group, and inventory item. The system tracks the following committed values of the project budget on the Cost Budget tab of the Projects form:

  • Original committed quantity and amount
  • Revised committed quantity and amount
  • Committed open quantity and amount
  • Committed received quantity
  • Committed invoiced quantity and amount

The initial commitment amount is displayed in the Original Committed Amount column and the Revised Committed Amount column. The Committed Open Amount of a new commitment is equal to the Revised Committed Amount.

When you release an accounts payable bill with the purchase order lines of the Service type, the Committed Invoiced Quantity and Committed Invoiced Amount of the corresponding commitments are updated with the Quantity and Ext. Cost values of the bill lines, respectively. The Committed Invoiced Quantity and Committed Invoiced Amount are subtracted from the Committed Open Quantity and Committed Open Amount and added to the Actual Quantity and Actual Amount, respectively.

When an inventory receipt that corresponds to the purchase receipt with the purchase order lines of the Goods for IN or Non-Stock type is released, the Committed Received Quantity of the corresponding commitments is updated with the received quantity. The received quantity and the amount of the Ext. Cost of the related purchase order lines that correspond to the received quantity are subtracted from the Committed Open Quantity and Committed Open Amount and added to the Actual Quantity and Actual Amount, respectively. When the purchase order lines of the Goods for IN or Non-Stock type are billed, the Committed Invoiced Quantity and Committed Invoiced Amount of the corresponding commitments are updated with the Quantity and Ext. Cost values of the bill lines, respectively.

After a purchase order line is assigned the closed status, the Committed Open Quantity and Committed Open Amount of the corresponding commitment become zero. If a purchase order has been canceled, the incomplete amounts are subtracted from the Committed Open Amount.

Workflow of Commitments

The following diagram illustrates the workflow of processing a commitment and the ways the commitment affects the project budget.