Why use a project accounting module ?

Use project accounting to explore the details that are often found at the micro level of the project. This method ensures that the business is meeting overall project financial goals by closely monitoring project costs, material expenses, invoices, and income. But how to use project accounting and especially why?

What exactly is project accounting?

Project accounting is a managerial approach geared toward project management and delivery. Its goal is to stay on top of project-specific expenses and activities that increase value, including recording, reporting, and evaluating financial outcomes. Your company can gain a greater understanding of which projects provide the most value and how to increase margins thanks to project accounting modules.

Initially, large-scale building, engineering, and government projects have employed project accounting to their benefit; however, this practice has recently spread to other industries as well. It's particularly popular among government contractors, who need to be able to account for expenditures by contract due to interim payments.

Project accounting is effective because it focuses on specifics. Professional services can quickly resolve workflow difficulties like time-consuming invoicing, miscommunications between departments, and other issues that arise from project to project by opting for a project accounting solution.

The benefits of project accounting

Easily break down expenditures

Project accounting allows you to easily allocate expenses, by keeping track of the project's costs, invoicing effectively and maintaining budgetary control.  You can get a deep understanding of what was successful and what wasn't by thoroughly tracking the resources that go into a project and their subsequent returns.  You'll know what's going on at every phase of the project's existence if you break it down into stages and tasks, track activity and costs, and centralize invoicing. You'll have greater visibility on important information: e.g., if a single task has reduced earnings, if your staff excel at their jobs, or if you overestimate your costs. It will allow you to have more control over your finances.

Cloud-based and accessible from anywhere

It's available in the cloud and may be accessed from anywhere. The benefit of cloud software is that you can quickly activate additional modules and add users as your company expands. You and your company's accounting staff may access critical information, handle invoices, and track budgets from anywhere with access to a computer, smartphone, or tablet. This is especially important, nowadays, since more and more businesses are moving to a work-from-home solution.

Flexible and adaptable to any project

Project accounting is flexible and adapts to any project type - from a government agency to a major construction firm, a film production (where it's known as production accounting), or even an internet business, everyone may benefit from project accounting modules. Project accounting has become an integral part of the services of organizations of all sizes, from fresh startups to rapidly developing enterprises. Furthermore, it is adaptable throughout deployment, allowing you to make crucial decisions in the middle of your project's life cycle rather than waiting until the end to discover what went wrong. Naturally, this is linked to the increased visibility that project accounting provides; while a post-mortem may provide useful information for the future, project accounting helps you succeed in your ongoing initiatives.

Increase the security of your data with security roles distribution

Project accounting allows you to increase the security of your data with distribution of security roles. Your data is safe if your accounting system has the proper data security measures. There are solutions for each of the major threats to project accounting in the cloud, ensuring the security of your business and accounting data. In spite of the attention paid to hacking incidents, it's critical to remember that the vast majority of organizations successfully entrust their accounting and operational data to the cloud. Security roles allow you to precisely specify what tasks users and administrators may perform, authorize, and access. For more complicated procedures, you may also establish custom permission sets. Furthermore, it is possible to automate particular activities or sequences of actions that require an official signature to give them a green light. Unless they are authorized, no one will be able to access or change accounting data. This is a great way to prevent internal security breaches.

The functionalities of project accounting

Billing cost overruns

Any time a budget exceeds expectations, it's described as a cost overrun since there were additional expenses that weren't planned for. This term is used to describe costs that exceed anticipated levels owing to a value engineering underestimate of the real cost during the budgeting phase. Cost overrun is distinct from cost escalation, which is the expected increase in a projected cost as a result of variables such as inflation. Project accounting software helps you keep track of your expenses and properly bill any cost overruns.

Timesheets associated with specific projects

Timesheets have become indispensable in project accounting for firms to manage their time and resources and keep project costs on track. They may also be used as a management tool to track expenses, plan capacity, and forecast team availability on a project.

Seamless integration with other modules

Project accounting modules are appealing for monitoring financial data because of their flexibility in configuration, setup, and connection with other modules. It gives you total control over project expenses and execution while also allowing you to keep track of project budgets.

Scalability

Your company will continue to evolve and expand. The accounting system you choose will not be the end of your organization's complexity. It'll just get more complex. As a result, you'll need a system that can scale and modify to meet your evolving needs.

Define the tasks

Things run more smoothly when everyone understands what to do and when to do it. Project accounting modules help you set clear tasks based on user responsibilities and business goals on a global or project-by-project basis. You can assign specific billing rates for tasks by project, job role or resource.

Direct addition of a project activity

It's simple to add activities. The data is incorporated and may be utilized in spreadsheets and with billable data in the future. In turn, activity-based costing allows you to identify the expenses associated with specific activities that make up a project or process, regardless of where they are located within an organizational structure.

Convert transactions that have already been invoiced

With a project accounting module, an invoice can be reversed, re-produced, and corrected for the receiver if it was generated and applied improperly.

Create billing rules

You can manage even the most complicated invoicing procedures and quickly estimate project income depending on specified characteristics.

Log all changes

Check to see who entered or modified the details of any transaction related to a project. Notes and supporting documentation in electronic format will be immediately linked to transactions, simplifying any verification procedure.

Project accounting with the Jobs module of Microsoft 365 Business Central

Dynamics 365 Business Central Jobs, previously known as Dynamics NAV, is designed for project-based organizations that require improved financial visibility for their endeavors. Keep track of your resources, project budgets, and more. With Power BI and Excel integrations, you can get sophisticated reporting. Dynamics 365 Business Central Jobs is also suitable for project-based businesses that just need basic functionality monitoring.

With resource allocation reports and job tracking, Dynamics 365 Business Central Jobs provides managers with insight into how projects are progressing. Using Business Central, you can keep track of staff time and costs for numerous projects at once, while correctly assessing project profitability thanks to resource cost and budget tracking. To plan future initiatives, you can keep an eye on resource capacity and resort to resource availability tools. Furthermore, employee time is tracked and approved across all jobs, while you can create personalized job metrics with Power BI.

Gestisoft is your partner in project accounting implementation

It's in your best interest as a business to have your finances in good shape. You owe it to yourself and your business to secure and optimize your accounting, which is exactly what Dynamics 365 Business Central can help you do.

Implementing a project accounting module, on the other hand, is a task that necessitates experience. To this end, you can rely on Gestisoft to help you obtain complete control over your accounting operations, whether for yourself or for your clients.

Contact us if you need assistance setting up your project accounting module.

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