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Hi Experts,
I am really struggling with my customer's use case here. We have a very complicated project estimation / pricing model for the customer to charge projects to their customers. What I basically want to do is setup a project contract that bills a fixed fee of say $50,000 and then have a project that will track the costs that are incurred to measure profitability. I have a cost price list setup at the organization unit level and it the project tracks my costs effectively.
My challenge is if I try to enter the Project Contract Line with a contracted amount of $50,000 (as shown below)
and then I choose to import from project estimation
then the Contracted Amount is "locked" and it would show the value from the project price list. Note, in my situation we set those all to $0.00 as we are only tracking the costs and charging the fixed fee independently. The price list for all the roles to the customer is set to $0.00.
Am I using this incorrectly? Should I never be importing from the project estimates for a fixed fee project otherwise it would charge the revenue from the project details?
Please help. I setup the following way to handle my needs but I don't like the work-around:
1. Setup a fixed fee project contract line for $50,000
2. Setup a 2nd fixed fee project contract line that connects the project and we import from the project estimates on this one but since the pricing is $0.00 it still works for our needs. Revenue is $50,000 and costs pull from project.
Yep that will work. I think that sounds like a very straightforward and "standard" approach to it. Is there a chance that you want to invoice additional hours if the project goes over 50k? If you do, the T&M line I suggested will let you do this via Time Entries.
The importing from project estimates only makes building a Project Contract faster. You don't have to use it. You can always confirm the Project Contract to prevent edits and then reopen it if you need to revise it or are using additional Order Lines for CRs etc.
Thank you for taking time to answer this, I appreciate your efforts.
I initially tried to do the "fee" as another project contract line detail record but if you click on the "Import from Project Estimates" again it removes the fee line completely and you need to re-add so I did not like that approach.
Overall what seems to work for me right now is the following:
1. Create the Fixed Fee Project Contract Order Line for the total of the contract (this is actually carried over from the Quote)
2. Create the new project and connect it to this Project Contract Order Line
3. Never click on the "Import from Project Estimates"
I am able to do the following with this approach:
1. Attach Invoice Schedule milestones to the project tasks
2. At the Project Contract level I can see the estimated total costs for the project along with the fixed fee revenue and the actual costs incurred to date
So, overall I think this answers my question and it is manageable. I just need to make sure they do not click on the "Import from Project Estimates". Am I missing something here? I don't think I need to do the import for any reason do I?
Hi Drew,
How do you want to reel in the costs against your Project Contract? As milestones are always invoiced with a 100 % margin due to a lack on Unbilled Sales Actual, this is what I normally suggest:
- Import from project estimates to produce a recipe of individual tasks. Set the price of these to 0.
- Add a fee of USD 50k. Then create a milestone/milestones for this. As you are entering a Project Contract Line Detail and the total sum of all PCLDs is rolled up on your Order Line, your Contracted Amount field will show USD 50k.
- People probably log time against projects so create a second Order Line for T&M and set roles to non-chargeable. Time and Expense Entries will give your the cost side for the Project Contract as you will get Cost Actuals.
Keep in mind that Actuals are THE records to use for profitability. They tell the true story behind your Project Contract. One thing I would do is only use Fee = Yes on a FP Order Line and then Time/Expese = Yes on a T&M Order Line.
Below is a photo of how I'd build an FP line's PCLDs.
Let me know if this works and if it doesn't, let's figure something else out.
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