How Acumatica Project Accounting Makes Life Easier for Service-Based Businesses

Virtually any service-based business can benefit from a robust project accounting solution. Staying productive and profitable requires accurately estimating projected costs, tracking expenses, managing time and people, providing flexible billing for customers, and more. Project accounting is a function that CAL Business Solutions’ customers are asking for more and more, and we use it internally ourselves.

Legacy ERP systems do not include an integrated module to address project accounting – you need to find a compatible add-on solution. CAL has covered at length the benefits that an end-to-end connected solution provides, and project accounting is no different. Disparate, disconnected systems can cause all sorts of mayhem – from inaccurate data to untracked time spent, to difficulties during billing.  Acumatica provides that “single version of the truth” which makes project tracking simpler, quicker, and more accurate.

What is Project Accounting in Acumatica?

Project accounting is not a standalone edition in Acumatica (like the Commerce or Construction Editions); it's a flexible complementary module that can be added to whatever Acumatica build you choose. When you add project accounting onto your current system, you gain the ability to:

• Track all project expenses and revenue
• Accurately bill, no matter the terms
• Create and monitor budgets with forecasting
• Track Project Specific Inventory
• Control change orders
• Manage project quotes
• Manage projects in multiple currencies

Acumatica Cloud ERP streamlines the flow of information for all types of project-based businesses.  From an opportunity in CRM to a quote to a sales order and then on to a customer invoice; from a purchase order to an accounts payable bill, resulting in expenses and inventory transactions that culminate in entries in the general ledger and project modules. The result, for decision makers throughout the organization, is timely, accurate insights at their fingertips.

Project accounting in Acumatica can work for many different firms, in any number of industries. Engineering firms, consulting firms, even field services-based technology or equipment installers like air conditioning or refrigeration - anyone with projects throughout which require managing of budgets and/or tracking of profitability can benefit from a modern solution.

Project Accounting in GP

We don’t need to speak in theoretical terms about the benefits that a connected solution like Acumatica provides: CAL needed to integrate with an external solution for years to track projects in Microsoft Dynamics GP.

On Great Plains (now known as Dynamics GP), not only did we have to integrate with an add-on module; we had five different systems. We had the same issues that any company would with so many moving parts: data inaccuracies, duplicated efforts, trouble with tracking time and expenses of our consultants. These are issues we see often with our project-based clients on legacy systems.

Acumatica Project Accounting vs. Great Plains (GP)

Once we switched to Acumatica, however, our processes changed drastically. Project accounting in Acumatica gives us the ability to track our consulting activities accurately. We can now immediately answer: “What's going on with this project? Where are we today?” There's the ability to do flexible billing: any complex billing rule that a contract may design, fixed-price or cost-plus (or others), revenue in multiple currencies, and more. Budgeting and budget reporting is native, as well. Dashboards can be built that easily compare forecasted and actual project costs, keep an eye on inventory items, labor, services, and more.

Change orders, project quotes, time sheets, revenue recognition, forecasting and much more – all within Acumatica’s intuitive user interface and accessible by anyone who needs to know, from anywhere.

An ever-changing business landscape requires that companies, projects- or services-based included, adapt quickly. Acumatica does that – it’s just built differently.

Contact CAL today to discuss how you can go from 5 (or more!) systems to one streamlined cloud solution.

By CAL Business Solutions, Acumatica and Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner, www.calszone.com