| Project Accounting
The bottom line for service companies is project profitability
and efficient resource allocation. In order for a company to be
profitable, they must be able to invoice clients quickly and accurately,
track projects and manage scope creep to make sure you get paid
and remain happy with the service. Finally, the decision makers
need to have the appropriate data at their fingertips so they can
make critical decisions on-the-fly.
Background
Our client, a systems engineering and advanced technology company,
had a corporate mainframe based custom legacy project-based accounting
system dating back to the 1980s.
After an initial key business requirement analysis, we chose the
Microsoft Dynamics Business Solutions Great Plains (GP) solution and outlined
to management in detail how Microsoft Dynamics Business Solutions Great Plains (GP)
would optimize best practice project profitability.
Solutions/Integrated functions
Data Migration: we used a commercial
off-the-shelf database mapping software to map the fields from the
mainframe into Microsoft Dynamics Business Solutions Great Plains (GP). We did
a one-time migration of the historical data (~10000 project work-orders)
spanning over a period of 15 years.
We created a custom component to automate, creating the project
master record for each contract, subcontracts, and project work
order numbers.
Custom components to ease data transfer: to duplicate the weekly
data entry effort with existing personnel was unrealistic. We developed
a custom tool to extract time card and accounts payable data weekly,
from the Legacy system and migrate that data into Microsoft Dynamics Business Solutions Great Plains (GP). After the successful close of the fiscal
year, Microsoft Dynamics Business Solutions Great Plains (GP) was put into full
production use. We linked ACCPAC and the Ceridian Payroll System
to move employee hours, absence remaining, and wages between the
two systems.
Reports: During the testing phase,
it was determined that we had to create extra reports to satisfy
differing business needs for the different shareholders within the
company: executives, Project Managers, and staff. The client had
3 additional offices throughout the country, and accessing the reports
through Citrix dial-up terminals was a slow process. It was decided
that a web-based reporting system would be deployed to support these
users in remote locations.
Timecards: The timecard system presented
another concern. Microsoft Dynamics Business Solutions Great Plains (GP) offers
a very flexible general-purpose accounting system. As such, it needs
to be given a significant amount of information for each project
entered on a time card. By contrast the client’s legacy accounting
system required only the employee id (I.D.), project id (I.D.),
and hours for each project. To solve this problem, it was decided
that a web based time card entry system would be implemented. Microsoft
eTimesheets, a browser-based time and expense entry, and project
cost management module was implemented using Microsoft Business
portal. The system implemented the client’s business rule
to determine the data values required by the timecard system.
Return On Investment
The client is able to create reports and easily publish and distribute
the reports to the different users within the company over the web.
The web based timecard entry system offers flexibility to users
to substitute paper/fax based submittal of their times. This prevents
double entry of numbers (sometimes illegible) and has decreased
entry errors by 80%.
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