Project Transactions: General Information

Project accounting is integrated with other functional areas of MYOB Advanced. 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

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).

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 debits the credit account of the project transaction and credits the debit account.

If you specify no debit and credit accounts for a project transaction on the Project Transactions form or specify only the debit account, 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 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 specified), otherwise the project transaction will not produce a general ledger transaction.

Project Budget Update

The system uses the combination of the project, project task, account group, and inventory item to match the transaction with a project budget line. If a budget line with the same combination exists, the system updates the Actual Quantity and Actual Amount of the corresponding budget line.

For a new combination that does not exist in the project budget, the system creates a new budget line. For the revenue budget, the system creates a revenue budget line with the same inventory item as the inventory item of the transaction if the Detailed option is selected in the Revenue Budget Update box on the General tab (General Settings section) of the Projects Preferences (PM101000) form. With the Summary option selected, the system creates a revenue budget line with the empty item code (N/A) instead of the inventory item of the transaction. Similarly, the system creates cost budget lines based on the option selected in the Cost Budget Update box on the General tab (General Settings section) of the Projects Preferences form.

The system updates the actual values of the project budget line using the following rules:

  • If the debit account of the project transaction is an asset or expense account and the amount is positive, the system updates the corresponding cost budget line with positive actual values. If the amount is negative, the system updates the cost budget line with negative actual values.
  • If the debit account of the project transaction is an income or liability account and the amount is positive, the system updates the corresponding revenue budget line with negative actual values. If the amount is negative, the system updates the revenue budget line with positive actual values.

    If an income or liability account is selected as the credit account of the project transaction and the amount is positive, the system updates the corresponding revenue budget line with positive actual values.

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 negative sign, if the account of the GL transaction is credited
  • GL Batch Nbr.: The batch number of the GL transaction
Tip: When a transaction is generated in another functional area of MYOB Advanced—such as accounts receivable, accounts payable, order management, or time and expenses—and posted to the general ledger, the system generates the corresponding project transaction in the same way as on the release of GL transactions.