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Project Forecasting (Cost To Complete)

  • 28 November 2022
  • 19 replies
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Looking for some best practices or trainings on how to use the projected cost to complete functionality in Acumatica? Looking to update the cost to complete on a monthly basis on each job and for it to flow to the WIP. 

 

Thank you in advance for your help!!

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Best answer by Heidi Dempsey 28 November 2022, 17:48

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@katiedavison   Check out this training.  V300_Construction_Edition.pdf (acumatica.com)   start page 86 Lesson 13.  Hope this helps.

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YouTube Demo video:

 

Acumatica Knowledge Base Article:

Hope this  helps you!

 

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@katiedavison - Look for additional user scenarios with Cost Projections and WIP Reports (among other items) coming with our 2023 R1 release.  These will enhance the existing functionality and provide some additional workflow possibilities.

Thanks.

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Am I understanding this process correctly, that the “create cost projection” steps needs to be done twice? Is this the simplest way to update the costs for many projects?  Thank you. 

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Hi  @Tcollins1968 

Can you clarify your question a bit more?  You only need to create the cost projection (with revision for your own auditing) and then release the projection when approved.  We allow multiple revisions/projections for the same project, but this is company dependent on the workflow.

This function is for Cost Forecasting (Cost at Completion, Cost to Complete, Percent Complete).

Happy to answer additional questions, feel free to outline a specific workflow you wish to achieve (Forecasted Costs, Actual Costs, Revised Budgets, etc.).

Thank You.

Joel

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On page 90 of the manual posted above, it says “The cost projection revision that you have created cannot be released because its level of detail does not fit the budget level of detail of the project. So after you have performed the initial analysis, you will create a cost projection revision with the same budget detail level as that of the project” “In this step, you will create the second cost projection revision and release it. You will then prepare a construction bonding report with the projected amounts. Do the following:”   I took that to mean the projection needed to be done twice?  We have not used the bonding reports, so I’m not familiar with this. 

 

We have been updating the cost projections by importing to Excel, updating the spreadsheet and then uploading.  This just didn’t seem like the easiest way since we have quite a few projects.  Thank you for your help.  Tracey

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Good clarification, thank you.

In Cost Projection Entry, there is a “Cost Projection Class”.  In order to move entries made within the Cost Projection Entry, a class that matches your Cost Budget Setup is needed.  Within Project Setup, there’s a drop down for “Cost Budget Level”, if you want to automatically send the cost projection entries to the project cost budget detail lines, they should match:

Depending on what you are using the figures for, we also have two values at the Project Cost Budget level.  One set is static (meaning direct entry/import), the other set comes from Cost Projection Entry.

 

Either of the figures can be imported from spreadsheets.  Directly into the static cost budget entries, or into the cost projection entry.

Hope this helps.

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@Tcollins1968

Aside from the validation error which has easy fix, about the WIP part I am going to offer some explanation. 
Not sure what role you have in your company. Acumatica’s Cost Projection from a Project Manager view might make sense to some degree. From Accountants perspective, the Cost Projections should role up for revenue recognition and WIP adjustments as well as bonding reports. But it does not. But why? To make this happen your Cost Projection figures (Budget, COs, Actuals, …) should agree to your project reports at any given date (For example if you run job cost report at the end of Feb 2023, it should agree to the Actual Cost of Cost Projection for Feb 2023). To this work Cost Projection should have a cut-off date but Cost Projection date is cosmetic and date is populated from budget not transactions. As a result, the cost projection figures are not valid for Rev Rec, WIP Adj and Bonding purposes. I am a huge fan of Acumatica and its promoter but Cost Projection is really not well analyzed and designed I believe. It might work OK for small businesses but you should accept the limitations. To make it work for a GC I have to write a huge customization (I would say only 10% of the base function is kept as is). The truth is it is way beyond explaining in this post. If you interested, please ping me in private chat and we can have a call and explain in depth. It’s a lot to it.

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@joelhoffman does the cost projection update the WIP report ?

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@iqraharrison48  - with 2023 R1, the projected costs are available for selection on the WIP report.

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@joelhoffman

Is Cost Projection cutoff date still cosmetic (changing the date doesn’t have any impact on the projection line figures) or by changing the date figures chang too? In mean 2023

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Good clarification, thank you.

In Cost Projection Entry, there is a “Cost Projection Class”.  In order to move entries made within the Cost Projection Entry, a class that matches your Cost Budget Setup is needed.  Within Project Setup, there’s a drop down for “Cost Budget Level”, if you want to automatically send the cost projection entries to the project cost budget detail lines, they should match:

Depending on what you are using the figures for, we also have two values at the Project Cost Budget level.  One set is static (meaning direct entry/import), the other set comes from Cost Projection Entry.

 

Either of the figures can be imported from spreadsheets.  Directly into the static cost budget entries, or into the cost projection entry.

Hope this helps.

Hi Joel,

Is there any visual aids around similar to what you have posted above with the red bubbles indicating what may be a static column and what not?

I am often presenting the solution to clients in pre-sales and forgetting the static and unstatic columns…. I’ve made a few of these myself as a reminder but just wondering if there was any Acumatica published versions

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@Tcollins1968

Aside from the validation error which has easy fix, about the WIP part I am going to offer some explanation. 
Not sure what role you have in your company. Acumatica’s Cost Projection from a Project Manager view might make sense to some degree. From Accountants perspective, the Cost Projections should role up for revenue recognition and WIP adjustments as well as bonding reports. But it does not. But why? To make this happen your Cost Projection figures (Budget, COs, Actuals, …) should agree to your project reports at any given date (For example if you run job cost report at the end of Feb 2023, it should agree to the Actual Cost of Cost Projection for Feb 2023). To this work Cost Projection should have a cut-off date but Cost Projection date is cosmetic and date is populated from budget not transactions. As a result, the cost projection figures are not valid for Rev Rec, WIP Adj and Bonding purposes. I am a huge fan of Acumatica and its promoter but Cost Projection is really not well analyzed and designed I believe. It might work OK for small businesses but you should accept the limitations. To make it work for a GC I have to write a huge customization (I would say only 10% of the base function is kept as is). The truth is it is way beyond explaining in this post. If you interested, please ping me in private chat and we can have a call and explain in depth. It’s a lot to it.

Does your customisation include Velixo at all?

We are in Australia and find the same when approaching large GC’s who live and breathe projections and forecasting. We are not yet fully adept at writing customisations….

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@kemery No, it does not. All are built into a customization package specific to Cost Projection Screen.

No headaches of:

  • exporting
  • manipulating and messing up in excel because of a lack of proper controls
  • importing
  • inability to keep track of changes over the life of the project for each line and their logs
  • inability to compare lines’ last and current Projected Cost at Completion
  • inability to have a proper and correct cut-off which is agreeing to your GL financial periods
  • Not having access to all the information you need at your fingertip (all originals, COs, revised budget, commitments, ...)

With all due respect to Gabriel and his team, Velixo’s strong suit is GL reporting I believe based on my two years of experience working with it.

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Am I understanding correctly,  that you guys are updating your cost projections manually right into the cost projection entry?  When we do this, it does not flow correctly.  We HAVE to export each project into excel for the changes to update correctly.  Having 40 projects to update before WIP meetings is way too time consuming.  We are clearly doing something wrong :)

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@Tcollins1968 That is correct. But, you are not the only one who uses out-of-box functionality and is forced to export, make changes, and import. I know quite a few but can not share their name because of confidentiality.

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Thank you @aaghaei !  We had a slow start and I’m trying to make sure we are using the system to it’s full potential :)

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Good clarification, thank you.

In Cost Projection Entry, there is a “Cost Projection Class”.  In order to move entries made within the Cost Projection Entry, a class that matches your Cost Budget Setup is needed.  Within Project Setup, there’s a drop down for “Cost Budget Level”, if you want to automatically send the cost projection entries to the project cost budget detail lines, they should match:

Depending on what you are using the figures for, we also have two values at the Project Cost Budget level.  One set is static (meaning direct entry/import), the other set comes from Cost Projection Entry.

 

Either of the figures can be imported from spreadsheets.  Directly into the static cost budget entries, or into the cost projection entry.

Hope this helps.

Hi Joel,

Is there any visual aids around similar to what you have posted above with the red bubbles indicating what may be a static column and what not?

I am often presenting the solution to clients in pre-sales and forgetting the static and unstatic columns…. I’ve made a few of these myself as a reminder but just wondering if there was any Acumatica published versions

@kemery 

No “Visual” that I know of, possibly use the help detail to build a document for reference?

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Thank you @aaghaei !  We had a slow start and I’m trying to make sure we are using the system to it’s full potential :)

@aaghaei  - Thank you for the time this week to review your customization and discuss the scenarios you have encountered and customization.  

@Tcollins1968  - As you can see by this thread and all the different scenarios, questions, etc. Cost Projections will continue to evolve.

When 2023 R1 is released in a couple weeks, I’ll look to have a focus group on the topic.  Stay tuned.

Thank You all for the activity here in our Acumatica Community!

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