Grace Freeman, Sage Intacct Senior Consultant at Percipient, introduces Sage Intacct’s Project Accounting module and talks us through how it is helping customers to keep projects on track while optimising performance and profitability.
A Focused Approach to Finance
Sage Intacct’s Project Accounting module is an out-of-the-box means of categorising and applying greater levels of relevant data to deliver a more specific, segmented, and meaningful view of the business to executives.
Easy and intuitive to use, with deep analysis and intelligence, Sage Intacct’s Project Accounting module makes it easy to create new projects, and then create tasks against these, to establish a micro-P&L for each area. This can of course be viewed by the project, as part of the overall P&L. Each project has its own lines for say expenses, time, and people, and brings in standard tasks within each project to ensure consistency in reporting.
Empowering Project Managers
Project Accounting complements and amplifies the core capabilities within the award-winning cloud platform, to empower project managers, and deliver ongoing and detailed P&L insights from which to ensure resources are aligned with goals.
Within Project Accounting projects are easy and flexible to set up, and crucially allow different cost types to be allocated accurately and appropriately. So, an IT services project for example might encompass contractors, internal-billable costs, and non-billable costs. From scope and build, to training and go-live, each phase has time/money attached and bespoke categories or lines can be included where scope dictates.
With all of these able to be tracked precisely in real-time, it’s easy to ensure projects stay on track both from a time and budget standpoint.
Clarity at Every Stage
Customers using the module typically see huge value in the clarity and ease of keeping in touch with the progress against objectives. At any given point they can see the profitability status and with this insight at hand, they can adjust levers where necessary to keep the right balance of resources versus work required against timeframes.
This capability, available via Sage Intacct’s dashboards for easy, intuitive viewing, takes Sage Intacct’s streamlining and automation of processes to new levels, framing key financials in a micro-environment, expediting processes, and speeding up productivity. AP Automation for example, an area notorious for being manually intensive, can be incorporated into each project, alongside staff timesheets and billable transactions, speeding up the invoicing and billing to optimise the cashflow associated with each project.
The type of data that can be included is limitless, and as reporting increasingly demands an ethical and environmental dimension, this can be included to create an even more comprehensive and detailed account of a project’s profile and trajectory.
Best Practice Modelling
Crucially, Project Accounting uses Gantt charts for a clear visual representation of projects, illustrating project schedules and the dependency between activities and current schedule status.
Every activity or input links seamlessly to the variables that have caused any changes. This ease of use, combined with integrity, allows revenue recognition to take place on an ongoing basis. It can look at the percentage of a project that has been completed, plot milestones, and auto-post on these. Through flagging key events against progress, a greater understanding can be garnered and the ‘why’ investigated to maintain focus on goals.
Collaboration, Confidence & Control
Ultimately, Project Accounting not only allows project managers and business decision-makers full, granular, and live visibility of all facets of a project, from costs and resources to outcomes, but the Office of the CFO can view the project as a dimension from which to include into the main P&L.
A comprehensive and live view also helps to maintain focus on business priorities and adjust resourcing, accordingly, reducing over-runs and ensuring that costs don’t escalate. By being able to easily and collaboratively monitor the progress and performance of a given project, the business can exert much greater control and confidence, elevating best practices, and boosting overall profitability.
Multi-Award-Winning Sage Intacct Partner UK
For more information on how we can help to take your project accounting to the next level with Sage Intacct, get in touch or call the team on 01606 871332.