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Project budgeting and accounting integration to general ledger budgets

I have a client which completes 5 major projects each year ( perfroming arts productions). They are currently on GP2010 moving to GP2013. We are looking for products that can integrate project budgets directly into the financial budgets.

Each Project spans 3-5 years. In 2013, costs will be incurred against the 2013 projects, 2014 projects, and 2015 projects with most costs incurred in the last 3-6 months before completion. Currenlty al budgeting is done manually in excel.

We would like the ability to generate project budgets for each production that can integrate seemlessley into the financial budgets. Each project budget needs to flag the year( month) the expense will be incurred ( cash flow). In many cases , the budgets are calculated based on a labor rate X hours or material X cost basis for rach line item. The financial budget needs to be driven by the projecty budgets and reflect both the year and month for the planned expenditure and the year/month it is recignized in the financial statements. We also need to be able to run budget vs. actual expenses at both the project and financial levels.

At present, the G/L structure incorporates additional segments for project accounting to faciliitate tracking of actual expenses. They would like to simplify the general ledger structure and are considering implementing the project accounting module to track projects and cost categories. However, over the course of a project, the budget is reforcast at specific periodic ingervals and it is important to maintain each forecast for comparative purposes. Project Accounting's budgeting seems limited in this regard. Also there is no clear integration between project budgets and finanical budgets. Lastly, payroll becomes more complicated to enter into project then in the payroll module due to complicated pay rates.

Does anyone have suggestions of products that can enable integration of project and fianncial budgets and as an alternative to the project accounting module in GP

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