Have you outgrown managing costs within Chart of Accounts?

When I hear from organizations who are having issues managing costs with Microsoft Dynamics GP’s Analytical Accounting module, it is typically because they feel that it is not flexible enough to track their specific costing needs. This is usually my first hint that this organization has advanced reporting needs and chances are they have outgrown just using their chart of accounts to track their activities.

Organizations who want to track costs and revenue at a more granular level, can do it with Dynamics GP. Dynamics GP was designed to grow with your organization, but you will find it easier to manage your reporting needs if you implement a project accounting for this kind of detailed reporting.
Whenever I start discussing the benefits of a project accounting system to my client, I am generally met with the objection “oh, but we don’t manage projects”. I think this myth needs to be busted. Call it what you will but a project accounting module will help with: job costing, cost accounting, activity-based accounting. The project accounting module is a way to manage costs and revenue within a sub-ledger so that there is more flexibility when allocating costs and revenues to their different activities. This allows organizations to have the details they need in order to slice and dice the information to suit their needs.

Don’t get me wrong, you can do a lot of neat stuff with Analytical Accounting and some advanced Excel Pivot Table skills, but think of the time spent extrapolating this data. With a project accounting module you can easily access your P&L Reports by activity/job/project and you can spend more time analyzing the data rather than massaging it.

Another sign that you should look at a project accounting system is when you have a complex organizational structure with multiple companies who are either working on the same project or one company is doing services or activities for multiple companies. With a project accounting module you will be able to ensure that the time and expenses are allocated to the appropriate company and that no project information will lost between two different charts of accounts. In turn, this will make it easier to pull reports for a specific project, regardless of which company has entered the data.

When looking at managing projects or activities across multiple companies, you should look at a more robust project accounting solution like JOVACO Project Suite. Their job cost module is fully integrated to Dynamics GP but has been designed to allow for multiple companies to input costs and revenue to the same project, therefore making it possible to automate inter-company markups and invoices but maintain the integrity of the actual project details within one report.

To learn more about if you can benefit from a project accounting solution, contact Briware Solutions to discuss if you have outgrown managing your activity costs within your chart of accounts.

About Briware Solutions

Based in the Greater Toronto Area, Briware Solutions provides enterprise level consulting services to growing companies throughout Ontario.  With a focus on improving the way Dynamics GP fits into business processes, Briware Solutions services customers in multiple industries including television, utilities, manufacturing, and distribution.

www.briwaresolutions.com

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