Project Accounting

Project Accounting is the act of planning, documenting, and adjusting costs for the resources used during a specific project. Though similar to Financial Accounting, there are some differences. For example, Project Accounting is project specific, reports on deliverables, and has a beginning and end date. For professional services organizations (e.g., engineering and construction, marketing, and consultants), establishing a budget and monitoring how well they’re sticking to the budget—from execution to completion—is made easy with Project Accounting Software, which helps users track their project data, manage contracts/records, and automate workflows while also integrating with existing financial systems.

When paired with a comprehensive Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution, Project Accounting Software is able to seamlessly integrate with General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Sales Order, Purchase Order, Inventory Management, and Time Management applications, thus allowing users to access data from—and streamline workflows through—a single, comprehensive solution.

Utilizing Project Accounting Software allows users to:

• Access and view all project costs (e.g., materials, labor, and services).
• Allocate expenses to individual projects.
• Recognize revenue through percentage of completion or by completed tasks.
• Compare actual project budgets to original and/or revised budgets with real-time reports.
• Manage and assign resources based on each project’s specific needs.
• Utilize different currencies (as needed).
• Monitor projects with role-based and configurable dashboards.

And companies that choose cloud-based Project Accounting Software increase their efficiency and accuracy by having the ability to access their data anytime and from anywhere using a web-enabled device of their choice.

As with any huge investment, companies must do their due diligence. This includes comparing different Project Accounting Software options. They can do this by reviewing analyst reports, seeking real-user opinions, and requesting input from their technology advisors. Companies’ research and evaluation efforts should also include surveying team members to find out what they consider essential features, and most would include the following must-have Project Accounting Software features:

• Change Orders: Manage project changes, including customer and internal requests, by creating change orders with all documentation in one solution.
• Forecast Project Budget by Period: Enter, modify, and compare project budget forecasts with actual project costs—and incomes—for each financial period.
• Link Timesheets to Projects: Track employee hours to individual projects and budgets.
• Task Definition: Assign tasks and billing rates based on project, job role, and individual resources based on specific projects.
• Create Billing Rules: With key project-specific attributes, manage complex billing rules and project revenues.
• Manage Project Quotes: In addition to creating project quotes, update, track, and link them to CRM in one place.
• Project Material Management: Streamline and simplify project material management with the ability to create requisitions with approvals workflow and create purchase orders to ship materials to project locations.

In addition to the right features, the right Project Accounting Software will also allow companies to scale up with concurrent project users, simplify corrections, easily—and directly—add project activity, and integrate with other applications (e.g., General Ledger, Accounts Payable/Receivable, Sales/Purchase Order Management, and more).

“Access to all the real-time data from Acumatica allows us to see which departments are succeeding, which need more attention, what product lines are successful, where our cost centers are, and where we are being the most profitable. Acumatica will help businesses grow.” – Julia Pinto Cisneros, COO, Quality Material Handling Inc.