Project Transactions: General Information

Project accounting is integrated with other functional areas of MYOB Acumatica. Project-related information from other functional areas flows to projects by means of project transactions that are used for tracking budget costs and revenue. You can also create project transactions directly without involving other documents.

Learning Objectives

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

• Capture project costs using project transactions
• Make the system create a project transaction based on a GL transaction
• Create a project transaction without posting to the general ledger
• Review how the system has updated the project budget on release of the project transaction

Applicable Scenarios

You manually create project transactions if you need to directly capture project costs without updating the general ledger. The transactions created for a project update the actual values of the project budget with the incurred expenses that you may need in one of the following cases:

• To control the amount of money spent on the project against the budgeted values
• To bill the customer for the incurred expenses
• To control the project profitability

You manually create general ledger transactions for a project if you need to directly capture project costs without creating original documents (such as bills, purchase orders, or time activities).

Manual Creation of Project Transactions

You can create a project transaction directly on the Project Transactions (PM304000) form. When you specify the Debit Account and Credit Account for the project transaction and release the transaction, the system creates the following general ledger transactions on the Journal Transactions (GL301000) form, based on whether the amount of the project transaction is positive or negative:

• For a positive amount, the GL transaction debits the debit account of the project transaction and credits the credit account.
• For a negative amount, the GL transaction credits the debit account of the project transaction and debits the credit account.

If either a debit account or a credit account is not specified in the project transaction, on the release of the transaction, the system does not generate the corresponding GL transaction.

If the Subaccounts feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features form, you must specify the debit subaccount along with the debit account (if one is specified); otherwise, the project transaction will not produce a general ledger transaction. Similarly, you must specify the credit subaccount along with the credit account (if one is specified); otherwise, the project transaction will not produce a general ledger transaction.

Update of the Project Budget with Project Transactions

The project budget key is the combination of the project, project task, account group, inventory item, and cost code, if applicable. The system uses the project budget key to match the transaction with a project budget line. If a budget line with the same project budget key exists, the system updates the Actual Quantity and Actual Amount of the corresponding budget line. For a new project budget key that does not exist in the project budget, the system creates a new budget line. For a detailed explanation on the rules that the system uses to update or create budget lines, see Project Transactions: Update of the Project Budget Structure.

For each line of a project transaction on the Project Transactions (PM304000) form, the system uses the following rules to update the budget of the corresponding project:

1. The system determines the number of lines to be updated as follows:
   • If an account group but no credit account group is specified in the project transaction line, the system will update one project budget line.
   • If the project transaction line has both an account group and a credit account specified, the system will update two project budget lines: the line with the project budget key that includes the account group, and the line with the project budget key that includes the credit account group.
2. The system updates the budget as follows, depending on the type of the account group specified in the Account Group or Credit Account Group column:
   • Expense: The system updates the cost budget line of the project on the Cost Budget tab of the Projects (PM301000) form.
   • Income: The system updates the revenue budget line of the project on the Revenue Budget tab of the Projects form.
   • Asset, Liability, or Off-Balance: The system updates only the project balance on the Balances tab of the Projects form; it does not update any revenue budget lines or cost budget lines of the project. The system also creates a line on the Project Budget (PM309000) form.
3. The system updates the actual amount in the project budget lines as follows:
   • If an account group of the Expense or Asset type was specified in the Account Group column, the system updates the actual amount by adding the amount in the project transaction line.
   • For an account group of the Income or Liability type that was specified in the Account Group column, the system updates the actual amount by subtracting the amount in the project transaction line.
   • If an account group of the Expense or Asset type was specified in the Credit Account Group column, the system updates the actual amount by subtracting the amount in the project transaction line.
   • For an account group of the Income or Liability type that was specified in the Credit Account Group column, the system updates the actual amount by adding the amount in the project transaction line.
4. The system updates the actual quantities in the project budget lines as follows:
   • For the account group that was specified in the Account Group column, the system updates the actual quantity by adding the quantity in the project transaction line.
   • For the account group that was specified in the Credit Account Group column, the system updates the actual quantity by subtracting the quantity in the project transaction line.

Creation of GL Transactions Related to Projects

On the Journal Transactions (GL301000) form, you can directly create a general ledger transaction related to a specific project and project task. To associate the transaction line with a project, you specify this project in the Project/Contract column and the applicable project task in the Project Task column.

If a general ledger transaction has a project and project task specified, in the Account column on the Journal Transactions form, you can select only an account that is mapped to an account group on the Account Groups (PM201000) form.

When a batch of GL transactions is released, for each transaction line in the batch with a project and project task specified, the system creates the corresponding project transaction with the following settings specified in a row of the table on the Project Transactions (PM304000) form:

• Project: The project associated with the GL transaction
• Project Task: The project task associated with the GL transaction
• Inventory ID: The inventory item associated with the GL transaction

  If no item is associated with the GL transaction, the system uses the empty item code, which is <N/A> by default and specified on the Projects Preferences (PM101000) form.

• Debit Account: The account of the GL transaction
• Account Group: The account group to which the account of the GL transaction is mapped on the Account Groups form
• Credit Account: Empty
• Amount: The debit amount of the GL transaction, if the account of the GL transaction is debited, or the credit amount of the GL transaction with the opposite sign, if the account of the GL transaction is credited
• GL Batch Nbr.: The batch number of the GL transaction