Forecasting in Acumatica

  • 11 September 2020
  • 34 replies
  • 1361 views
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Are you using Project Budget Forecasting (PM209600) or Cost Projections (PM305000)? 

  • If yes, are you getting the desired results? Do you wish you could do more? 
  • If no, why not? Do you need additional functionality for your specific workflows? 

Could you use a short training session to get you started? 

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@moniquelarcheveque8 - Thank you for the idea, I like it.  I’ll need to give some thought to whether the Percent Complete would be totaled, or just the Cost to Complete and Cost at Completion, as the Percentage is probably not cumulative, rather line by line.

In the meantime, you can create a Generic Inquiry that would do the consolidation and make it available to your PM’s.  Also, it could be used as a basis for Dashboard Information or Notifications, if it results in your companies tolerances being exceeded.

 

Joel - will the 2023 R1 update of Cost Projections include the ability to copy a revision, refresh actual costs, but keep projected amounts from previous revision?

And are there any changes happening with calculation formulas in certain columns? The system does not seem to calculate completed / 100% projected percentages correctly.

Example below… we were over budget on this specific line item by say 300%. The task is now complete so we change it to manually be 100% completed. Why does it still say there is 6.51 quantity to complete?

 

Also seems weird that changing projected quantity to complete to 0 doesn’t automatically trigger the projected completed % to 100%.

 

Finally… it would be HUGE to allow us to use the calendar date selection to reflect actual amounts from that date in time.

joelhoffman
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Hi @brandontfrank 

I just ran a test with my 2023 R1 Beta version and the calculations of percent complete/associated Cost or Quantity to complete work as you anticipate.  Setting Projected Quantity or Cost to Complete to zero will set the Projected Completed % to 100, and vice versa with the Projected Completed % setting to 100 making the other values zero.

I also used the Copy Revision (with Refresh Budget checked) as well as the ‘Refresh and Recalculate’ option bar button, both will keep the prior projected entries.

The Revision Date is used to correspond into a Financial period, I’ll need to review your request for specific date in time, not financial period related.

Thanks.

 

Joel Hoffman
aaghaei
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@joelhoffman

I was curious about the changes made in Acumatica 2023R1 re Cost Projection. So I reviewed the code in detail and compared it to 2022R2 as I know I have developed a huge customization on it. The major changes I noticed were

  • Introducing a few extra DACs mostly for reporting purposes at the Project level more specifically to show Project Revenue and profitability on top of the form.
  • Some additional control/methods for the Released projections
  • Adding Quantity and Amount variance fields to the lines and Amount variance to the document level. Not sure why Acumatica got the calculation for these two fields the other way around but I believe you need to fix this before the 2023R1 final release. Always when something is good we show positive (green or black) and when bad we show negative (red typically). For example, if we have a profit it is going to be good and positive and if we have a loss, it is bad and negative. If we are going to finish our project at a lower cost than what we budgeted for is good so should be positive (black/green) and if we are exceeding our cost budget in fact, we are losing money, and is bad and should be negative (Red). To comply with this logic for the variance you should have formulated the variance as “Variance = RevisedBudget - ProjectedCostAtCompletion” but surprisingly Acumatica has managed to re-invent the logic and in code has switched the Budget place with Projection. As a result, if we perform better we show negative variance and if we do worse we show positive variance which I believe is wrong and need to be fixed.
  • Thanks for removing the enormous amount of extra blank lines which makes reading the code for people more convenient.
  • other than a few exceptions, the majority of the classes/methods are declared as “private” classes which makes the customization a pain and high maintenance. can you please have your team review them and make them public so that we can call/override them instead of copying/pasting them? What harm it is causing to decorate them as the public that can be called from extensions without hacking?
  • The rest of the major issues and shortcomings that cost projection had and I presented some of them to you during the meeting we had, still exist. 
  • There is an error in Copy Dialog DAC declaration as follows “public abstract class refreshBudget : PX.Data.BQL.BqlBool.Field<copyFiles> { }” that need to be fixed. Someone seems copied from “CopyFiles” and forgot to edit.

 

Reza Aghaei CPA, M. Acc. & Acumatica Customization - If a member helped you, please *Like* their post. If a member provided an answer to your question, please mark it as *Best Answer*.
iqraharrison48
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@Angela Bloomer Construction was a training ever set up for this? if so, could you share the link to the recording? 

Iqra ~ If a member helped you, please *Like* their post. If a member provided an answer to your question, please mark it as *Best Answer*.
aaghaei
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@joelhoffman

Joel, I might be wrong but I guess Acumatica’s development team who are working on Cost Projection have missed the calculation of VarianceQuantity & VarianceAmount in the InitFieldsFromBudget method. I thought to point this out here that they may want to have a look.

Also PLEASE have your team remove protected from the methods (public virtual please) and change private methods to public virtual to take away the pain of being forced toward abstract classes … and hacking private methods which Acumatica itself is against it for customization purposes.

Reza Aghaei CPA, M. Acc. & Acumatica Customization - If a member helped you, please *Like* their post. If a member provided an answer to your question, please mark it as *Best Answer*.
ESTEPALINA
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And are there any changes happening with calculation formulas in certain columns? The system does not seem to calculate completed / 100% projected percentages correctly.

Example below… we were over budget on this specific line item by say 300%. The task is now complete so we change it to manually be 100% completed. Why does it still say there is 6.51 quantity to complete?

 

Also seems weird that changing projected quantity to complete to 0 doesn’t automatically trigger the projected completed % to 100%.

 

Finally… it would be HUGE to allow us to use the calendar date selection to reflect actual amounts from that date in time.


Hi @brandontfrank ,

If you set Mode = Manual Quantity in the cost projection line, you will be able to set Projected Completed % = 100% and set Projected Quantity to Complete = 0 too.
In this mode, the system does not react on changes in the quantity fields in this line.

Thank you!
joelhoffman
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@Angela Bloomer Construction was a training ever set up for this? if so, could you share the link to the recording? 

Hi @iqraharrison48 , I will check for a training recording, but I do not believe one was completed.  We do plan to have a session around Projections at 2024 Summit.

Joel Hoffman
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And are there any changes happening with calculation formulas in certain columns? The system does not seem to calculate completed / 100% projected percentages correctly.

Example below… we were over budget on this specific line item by say 300%. The task is now complete so we change it to manually be 100% completed. Why does it still say there is 6.51 quantity to complete?

 

Also seems weird that changing projected quantity to complete to 0 doesn’t automatically trigger the projected completed % to 100%.

 

Finally… it would be HUGE to allow us to use the calendar date selection to reflect actual amounts from that date in time.


Hi @brandontfrank ,

If you set Mode = Manual Quantity in the cost projection line, you will be able to set Projected Completed % = 100% and set Projected Quantity to Complete = 0 too.
In this mode, the system does not react on changes in the quantity fields in this line.

 

Hello @ESTEPALINA 

We were able to customize the cost projections module with the excellent help of @aaghaei  Our goal was for Project Managers to never have to toggle the mode – didn’t even want them to have to know about it.

Now, when 100% completion is logged into the system, it automatically zeros out the projected cost and project units remaining. This has been particularly beneficial, as it accurately represents our business model wherein 100% completion signifies no further time or expense allocated to that code. Any projection exceeding 100% activates an immediate alert, signaling Project Managers to conduct a thorough evaluation.

The other functionality change he was able to make for us (which would be outstanding out of the box) is percent % column will recalculate if you enter into the projected cost to complete OR projected units to complete without having to manually change the mode. It recalculates each time based on whatever field you’re forecasting off, dollars and units.

The out-of-box Cost Projections simply lacks key columns, calculations, and filtering capabilities. Most of our team was just exporting to Excel and forecasting from there. If Acumatica ever decides to revamp and enhance the cost projection module - I would HIGHLY suggest they ping @aaghaei to see some of the work he’s done. 

aaghaei
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@brandontfrank thank you for all the kind words. I truly enjoyed working with you and rest of your team. You really have a well developed business process and because of that expected results was very clear from the beginning and along with all the support yourself and rest of executives offered to the success of project lead us to have something really neat and functional. It is one of my top three favorites above all the rest. If it is ok with you @brandontfrank, I will write up a short list of needs/shortcomings highlights and how we addressed it and put here in case someone else comes across this post.

Reza Aghaei CPA, M. Acc. & Acumatica Customization - If a member helped you, please *Like* their post. If a member provided an answer to your question, please mark it as *Best Answer*.

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