Project Partners Blog

By Kimberly McDonald Baker

We want to be sure you don’t miss a new case study article featured in the November 2012 issue of Profit Magazine, titled “Unifying Financial and Project Management” In this article you will learn about Colonial Pipeline Company’s integrated Oracle E-Business Suite and Primavera systems, and a few of the benefits that Colonial is receiving.

With the new, integrated Oracle system, Colonial will have all project related financial records and information in one centralized repository. Project managers and the leadership team will be able to view individual projects or overall capital spend easily. With the new system, Colonial expects time spent on monthly status reporting to decrease by 75 percent, from 8,000 to 2,000 project management hours annually.

“This is a paradigm shift of work for our project managers from doing data manipulation to actually being a project manager,” says Phillip Chandler, Financial Controls Administrator at Colonial Pipeline Company. “This allows them to support our customers both internally and externally in a more effective manner.”

Chandler says Project Partners has helped Colonial implement best practices into its processes, making the company more efficient. “The Project Partners team is sensitive to the specific needs of Colonial. At the same time, they are able to present solutions from an outside perspective that we also need to grow as a business,” says Chandler. “Project Partners has provided the expertise and professionalism that we needed for developing and implementing our project.”

You can read the full article here.

By Neeraj Garg

This is the third of three articles discussing new enhancements in Oracle E-Business Suite Projects Applications Release 12.2. In this article we address the third of three key enhancements: Costing Using Payroll Actuals

Costing Using Payroll Actuals

This enhancement enables companies to use actual payroll costs from Oracle Payroll or a third-party payroll system to cost project labor transactions. These actual costs are distributed to the labor transactions on projects using new mapping rules that specify the expenditure type, cost type and distribution rules to be used for this purpose. Figure 1 shows an example of this mapping.

Figure 1

Drawing on this mapping and the amounts retrieved from the payroll system, the costing process will distribute payroll costs to various labor transactions, as illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2

The resulting distributed costs are shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3

Users also have the choice of accruing standard labor costs prior to a payroll run in order to report project costs and support billing. When payroll costs are distributed, the accrued costs are automatically reversed. In addition, a new process has been introduced in the solution to support payroll roll-backs needed for error correction. This process will reverse out an existing labor distribution to projects, making all the transactions re-eligible for costing. Then, when the new payroll run is completed, these transactions can be costed with the corrected payroll numbers. This process may also be used to correct errors in the setup of labor costing in Oracle Projects. For example, it can be used to reverse out a standard costing run and replace it with an actual costing run.

As with the Costing Using HR rates method described above, companies implementing this feature need consider the need for labor-cost information security, because actual labor costs may be exposed.

Conclusion

With this recent set of enhancements, Oracle E-Business Suite Projects has evolved into a more complete solution that can be used to address nearly any costing requirements that companies may have. Oracle users can more easily take advantage of various approaches to labor costing, using payroll data, HR rates and total time. These enhancements allow companies to manage and perform costing in ways that fit their specific needs, which in turn helps create a better understanding of project costs and, ultimately, profitability.

If you have questions about the new costing enhancements, the use of costing extensions, or any other issues pertaining to using Oracle Applications in an project-intensive environment, contact us! We are always very happy to help end-users make the best use of the applications that we at Project Partners originally invented.

By Neeraj Garg

Continuing from last week’s blog article, new enhancements in Oracle E-Business Suite Projects Applications Release 12.2 allow companies to address various project costing requirements without the use of extensions. There are three key enhancements:

1. Total Time Costing
2. Costing Using HR Rates, and
3. Costing Using Payroll Actuals.

Total Time Costing

This enhancement addresses the need to cost labor transactions using effective rates, and especially to encompass exempt employees who do not get paid for overtime work. Like Standard Costing, this enhancement works with standard rates. However, it computes an effective rate for costing labor transactions based on total time charged for a period and the base hours for that period.

There are three new setup elements that are needed to enable Total Time Costing:

1. Effective period (typically, this will be “weekly”)
2. Base hours
3. Enabling Total Time Accounting – new Costing Method for Labor Costing

With these three elements enabled, the effective rate used for costing labor transactions is now computed using the following three-step formula:

                 I.          Base Hours/Charged Hours * Derived Rate = Effective Rate
                II.          Effective Rate * Charged Hours = Raw Cost (Labor)
               III.          Labor Raw Cost * (1 + Burden Multiplier) = Total Burdened Cost (Labor)

In addition, if Total Time Costing is enabled and a new or adjusted transaction is introduced for a person for a previously costed period, the solution does not re-cost all transactions in that previous period. That is, it leaves them at the old rate rather than applying the new rate that was derived using the new total charged hours.

Overall, this enhancement allows users to accurately cost labor for exempt employees. It also allows organizations to meets federal contracting rules for exempt employees, as spelled out in the DCAA Contract Audit Manual, Section 9.

Costing Using HR Rates

This enhancement enables organizations that hold employee rate information in Oracle HR to directly use these rates for project labor costing. This feature is enabled by setting Rate Source in Oracle Projects to “HR” in the costing rule allocation. Rates are then retrieved from the Oracle HR rate matrix using “Rate by Criteria.”

There are many standard criteria available for setting up matrix rates in Oracle HR. Users can also add custom criteria to the rate matrix; these criteria can even call for rates at the project and task levels, if that degree of granularity is needed. Typically, the most commonly used criteria in a matrix are “job,” “location,” and “work type.” A new Project Timecard Template in Oracle Time and Labor has been seeded with these three attributes.

HR rates may also be enabled for use in planning when companies need to compute labor costs in budgets and forecasts.

This enhancement can also play a role in compliance. For example, many companies will benefit from the fact that it enables support for the Davis-Bacon Act in the U.S., which requires companies to pay minimum prevailing wage rates for construction work done at a given location. Also, because the HR rates used in calculations are the actual rates paid to employees, it is very important that labor-cost information security be carefully considered and implemented prior to enabling this enhancement.

In the next blog article we will discuss Costing using Payroll Actuals.

Try Us and Find Out How You Can Have It All Right Now!

By Pat Bowyer

On March 28, 2012, we presented an OAUG Sponsored webcast to discuss and demonstrate the timecard entry solutions we’ve developed, our mProjects Time Management™ mobile timecard and our TimeSpeed™ spreadsheet user-interface applications, both fully integrated with Oracle Time and Labor and Oracle Projects, and extending the functionality of those applications, that will help take the headache out of project timecard entry.

Sound interesting? You can register to view the recorded webinar here.
Read the rest of this entry »

by Robert D. Anderson, CPA

On January 18th, I presented a webinar featuring a case study of a firm that is successfully using Oracle E-Business Suite Projects, Oracle Order Management and Oracle Receivables, and I showed how they manage their revenue.  This customer leverages R12.1.3 revenue management functionality for GAAP revenue recognition and uses EBS Projects with a different revenue recognition basis.  In this webinar I also showed how creative approaches to integrating Orders and Projects are possible with minimal development, that robust solutions support long term business needs while also providing flexibility for growth, and that simple approaches lead to the best long term solutions.

Sound interesting?  You can view the webinar here

Have two minutes?  View our new video showing how easy it is for you to manage your timecards and charge time to a project, while leveraging Oracle Time and Labor Functionality - from your smart phone.  Check it out here

By Ravi Shankar, PgMP, PMP, PMI-RMP and PMI-SP

Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) Projects Applications Release 12 provides rich functionality to support multi currency processing capabilities in the areas of accruing revenue and generating invoices.  Revenue is always processed in the project functional currency, as distinct from the project currency and project funding currency.  Revenue amounts derived in the billing transaction currency (invoice processing currency) are converted to project functional, funding and project currency during the revenue generation process.  The Release 12 EBS system tracks and posts the revenue, unbilled receivables and unearned revenue in both the functional and billing transaction currency to the general ledger, thereby giving full visibility, both at the project level and in the general ledger, of the details of revenue in the different currency options. Read the rest of this entry »

The information below provides an overview of the reporting and metrics available in Project Analytics for Project Executives. The pages have been configured to use Quarters; however, Period could have been configured as the ‘time grain’ instead. The information on each tab in the Project Executive area has been taken from the Dashboard Index. Additional information below each of the screenshots describe details of the metrics and functionality within each of the interactive dashboard pages.

Project Executive

Screenshots of the default dashboard for each tab within the Project Management reporting area are shown below. Results in the dashboards can be filtered using the parameters at the top of each dashboard (Fiscal Year, Fiscal Quarter, Fiscal Period, PA Period, Business Unit, Organization, Project Manager Name, Project Class, Project Type, Program Name, Project Name, and Service Type). Additional query modifications are available using the ‘Modify’ link.

2.1 – Overview

Provides the default aggregated view of information for all the organizations satisfying the dashboard filter criteria, with the ability to drill down to project details that each organization responsible for. This dashboard page provides quick overview of Inception-to-date performance, variances, and the number of projects that each organization is currently executing and their profitability and cost performance.

ITD Performance (Forecast, Budget and Actual) by Quarter and Organization uses Views (Chart, ITD Data, and ITD Variance) to display the information. You can drill thru to Project Invoice Aging as well as to Project Commitments. The graphs include ITD Margin %, Cost, Revenue Margin, Forecast Cost, Forecast Revenue, Forecast Margin and Forecast Variance.

Projects in Progress uses Dimensions (Organization and Project Type) to Display (Chart or Table) the number of ongoing projects. Changing the Dimension changes the display for the charts adjacent and those listed immediately below. Project Health by Margin Performance Displays (Chart or Table) the health of the projects with accumulated revenue (On Track, At Risk, Critical).

Profitability Summary by Organization Displays (Chart or Table) the margin percentages of the projects. Revenue Amounts and Margin Amounts represent the axes of the graph. Cost Performance by Organization Displays (Chart or Table) Percentage Cost Variance by the Dimension selected. You can drill thru to Cost Budget Details by Organization.

2.2 – Profitability Management

Provides the detailed profitability information for the organizations and the projects under the organizations with the ability to drill down to projects, tasks and resources. It provides the comparisons of the profitability to the budgets and forecasts, and period over period changes in the margin, including trending with the ability to drill down to the project, task and resource details.

Actual Profitability by Organization, Project Class, Project Type allows you to report by Project Organization (show above), Project Class, Project Type or Program. You can View the information by Margin Percentage, Margin, Revenue, Cost and Data. Above, Actual Margin Percentage is compared to QAGO (one quarter prior) and Actual Margin. You can drill thru to Actual Profitability Year Over Year by Organization.

Forecast Profitability by Organization, Project Class, Project Type allows you to report by Project Organization (above), Project Type, Project Class, and Program Name. Forecast Margin Percentage by Project Organization is displayed above. You can drill thru to YTD Profitability by Organization.

Profitability by Top Job Codes Displays (Chart or Table) Margin Percentages for all the Top Job Codes. You can click on the link to view Profitability for all Job Codes.

Profitability by Top Customers Displays (Chart or Table) Margin Percentages for the top customers. You can display Profitability for all Customers as well.

Actual Profitability Trend by Fiscal Period uses Views (Trend, Revenue Distribution, Cost Distribution, Margin Distribution and Data to report Actual Margin Percentage, Actual Revenue and Actual Cost. Margin Change Quarter Over Quarter Trend by Organization uses Views (Margin Percentage Change, Margin Change, and Data) to report quarterly margin changes.

Profitability Details by Project Organization Summarizes (Project Organization, Project Class, Project Type, or Program) Revenue Budget, Cost Budget, Actual Revenue, Actual Cost, Actual Margin, Actual Margin Percentage, Forecast Revenue, Forecast Cost, Forecast Margin, Actual/Cost Budget Variance, and Forecast/Budget Cost Variance.

2.3 – Cost Management

Provides the detailed cost information for the organizations and the projects under the organizations with the ability to drill down to projects, tasks and resources. It provides the cost comparisons of organizations, programs, expenditure categories, and cost variances by top projects, top resources, including trending with the ability to drill down to details.

Actual Cost by Organization by Financial Resource uses Dimensions (Expenditure Category, Project Organinzation, Project Type, Program, and Supplier Name to Display (Chart or Table) Total Cost, Raw Cost, Burden Cost, People Cost, Equipment Cost, Billable Cost, Non-Billable Cost, Capitalizable Costs and Expenses. You can also drill thru to Actual Efforts by Organization by Financial Resource.

Cumulative Cost Variance by Top Projects Displays (Chart or Table) ITD cost variances for your top projects. You can view this information for all projects via Cumulative Cost Variance by Project. Cumulative Cost Variance by Top Resource displays variances for top resources. All resources may be viewed via Cumulative Cost Variance by Resource.

Actual Total Cost, Billable Cost Trend by Fiscal Quarter displays Cost, Billable Cost, Non-Billable Cost, and Billable Cost Percentage by quarter. You can click on the Fiscal Quarter to view Cost Trends. This information is displayed in tabular and graphical format.

You can drill thru to Cumulative Cost Billability by Project, Cumulative Cost Variance by Project, People Effort Trend by GL Period, Cumulative Cost Trend by Fiscal Period, and Cost Transactions.

Cost Trend by Fiscal Period has two Views (Summary by Fiscal Period, Details by Project) of Current Cost Budget, Forecast Cost, Billable Cost, Non-Billable Cost, Actual Cost, Cost Percentage Spent, Cost Variance and Cost Variance Percentage. The information is display both in tabular and graphical format.

2.4 – Revenue Management

Provides the detailed Revenue, Billing and Funding information for the organizations and the projects under the organizations with the ability to drill down to projects, tasks and resources. It provides revenue, billing and funding comparisons of organizations, customers, and programs, and revenue performance by top projects, top customers including trending with the ability to drill down to details.

Revenue by Organization by Customer uses Dimensions (Customer, Revenue Category, Project Organization, and Program) to Display (Charts or Tables) to compare Revenue to Bill Amounts. In the table format, you can click on Project Organization to drill to Project or Project Manager details. Unearned Revenue vs Unbilled Receivables shows these amounts by the dimension selected.

Revenue by Project Location initially displays the information by Country. You can click on the country to view revenue details by Project State and Project City. You can drill thru to Revenue Trend by Project Location by Fiscal Quarter.

Revenue by Top Customers by Top Projects allows you to select Dimensions (Customer or Project Name) to Display (Chart or Table) Margin and Margin Percentage by the dimension selected.

Revenue Trend by Fiscal Period allows you to choose a View (Summary by Fiscal Period or Details by Project) Current Budget Revenue, Forecast Revenue, Revenue Amount, Bill Amount, Unbilled Receivables, and Unearned Revenue. The information is displayed in table and graphical format. You can drill thru to Cumulative Revenue Trend by Fiscal Period, ITD Actual Revenue Details by Organization, and Revenue Transactions.

Funding Details by Organization displays Initial Funding Amount, Additional Funding Amount, Adjustment Funding Amount, Cancelled Funding Amount, and Net Funding amount by Project Organization. Remaining Funding Amount by Organization for Active Projects displays Project Organization, Customer, Funding Amount, Revenue Amount, Remaining Funding Amount, and Remaining Funding Amount Percentage in a table.

Lost Funding Amount for Closed Projects shows Project Organization, Customer, Funding Amount, Revenue Amount and Lost Funding Amounts. You can also drill thru to Remaining Funding Not Started by Organization or to Agreement Summary by Organization.

Summary

The Project Executive area of Project Analytics provides those users whose organizations are responsible for running projects the appropriate level of visibility into the type of information they need to effectively manage and forecast results for the enterprise. And since the pages are interactive, managers can focus on the metrics that are meaningful to the organization and download that information as needed.

The information below provides an overview of the reporting and metrics available in Project Analytics for Project Management. The synopses can be found on the Dashboard Index and describe each tab within the Project Management Application. Additional details on each of the screenshots describe details of the metrics and functionality within each of the interactive dashboard pages.

Project Management

Screenshots of the default dashboard for each tab within the Project Management application area are shown below. Results in the dashboards can be filtered using the parameters at the top of each dashboard. Additional query modifications are available using the ‘Modify’ link.

1.1 – Project Performance

Provides the default-aggregated view of information for all the projects satisfying the dashboard filter criteria, with the ability to drill down to a specific project details. This dashboard page provides quick overview of key performance indicators such as ITD margin %, ITD cost and revenue variances for the group of projects or a specific project. It also provides a quick snapshot of covering cost, efforts, revenue, billability and billing for the group of projects or for a specific project.

Gauges show margins, variance for costs, revenue and forecasts. My Projects displays in chart or table format Budget, Actual and ETC costs for the user’s projects. Financial Performance aggregates the data in My Projects. Clicking on a specific project filters all Project Performance data for that specific project    .

Margin Percentage Trend displays ITD Forecast, Budget, and Cost Margins over time and allows drill thru to Profitability Details. Cumulative Cost Trend shows ITD Forecast, Budget, and Cost Totals over time and allows drill thru to Cost Details.

Effort, Cost, Revenue, Billability and Billing compare Original Budget, Current Budget, Actuals, Percent Spent, ETC, EAC, and calculate Variances using those factors.

1.2 – Financial Management

Provides the default-aggregated view of information covering the financial aspects for a group of projects or a specific project satisfying the dashboard filter criteria. This dashboard page provides quick overview of Inception-to-date performance, variances, cumulative revenue, cost, margin, billing and period over period changes and the funding summary with the ability to drill down to takes or resources, including trending.

Actuals, Budget, Variance (Budget vs. Actuals), Forecast display Cost and Revenue Actuals, Budget and Forecast Amounts, Margins, Variance all by Fiscal Quarter. If Financials Analytics is enabled, you can drill thru to Procurement and Spend Analytics.

Trend views show Revenue and Cost Trends by Quarter. Further, Revenue and Costs display Quarter over Quarter Trends. Drill thru to Cost and Revenue Details and Cost and Revenue Transactions is possible from these charts (more trends follow below).

Trends: Invoice Amount, Unearned Revenue and Unbilled Receivables are displayed by Quarter by Project. Funding Summary by Project shows Original Funding, Additional Funding, Total Funding, Baselined, and Remaining Funding.

1.3 – Budget Details

Provides the detailed budget information for the projects and the tasks under the projects with the ability to drill down to child tasks and resources. It provides the budget accuracies for cost and revenue, budget changes in comparison with original budgets, including trending and other details.

Budget Accuracy by Project displays EAC, ETC, Current Budget, Actual Costs, and Actual Revenue amounts. Clicking on Project allows task drilldown. Amounts are charted by Cost Budget and Revenue Budget Accuracy. You can also drill thru to Budget Accuracy by Financial Resource.

Budget Trend by GL Period displays Current Cost and Revenue Budgets, Forecasts, Budget Margin and Forecast Margins. Amounts are charted below the table. You can drill thru to Cumulative Budget Trend by GL Period and to Budget Transactions.

1.4 – Cost Details

Provides the detailed cost information for the projects and the tasks under the projects with the ability to drill down to child tasks and resources. It provides the cost comparisons of employees, job codes, tasks and other resources, including trending and other details.

Actual Cost by Project, Financial Resource shows total Costs and Billable Costs by project. These amounts are charted as well. You can drill thru to Actual Efforts by Project, Financial Resource.

Dimensions include Project Name (shown), Expenditure Category, Resource Type, Top Level Task Name and Supplier Name. Metric includes Billable Cost, Non-billable Cost, Capitalizable Cost.

Actual Cost Distribution by Job Code can be displayed in a Chart of a Table. This is also true for Actual Cost Distribution by Employee (named Person).

Cost Trend by Fiscal Period displays Current, Forecast, Billable, Non-billable, Actual Costs, along with Cost Variance and Cost Variance Percentage. Amounts are charted as well.

Drill thru is possible to Cumulative Cost by Fiscal Period, Cumulative Cost Billability by Project, Cumulative Cost Variance by Project, People Effort by GL Period, and Cost Transactions.    

Actual Total Cost, Equipment Cost, and People Cost by Project breaks these cost amounts out by project. Amounts are charted as well.

1.5 – Revenue Details

Provides the detailed revenue information for the projects and the tasks under the projects with the ability to drill down to child tasks and resources. It provides the revenue comparisons of employees, job codes, tasks and other resources, including trending and other details.

Revenue by Project, Financial Resource displays Revenue and Bill amounts by project. Amounts are also charted.

Dimensions include Project Name, Resource Type, Top Task Level Name, Revenue Category and Customer.

Revenue Distribution by Employee charts each Employee’s percentage of revenue. Revenue Distribution by Job Code charts revenue contribution by Job Code.

Revenue Trend by Fiscal Period displays Current Budget Revenue, Forecast Revenue, Revenue Amounts, Bill Amounts, Unbilled Receivables, and Unearned Revenue by Project. Some of these are charted as well.

You can drill thru to Cumulative Revenue Trend by Fiscal Period, Revenue Transactions and Event Revenue Details by Project.

ITD Actual Revenue Details by Project shows Revenue and Bill Amounts by Project, Project Manager, Revenue Category, Primary Customer, and Agreement Number

1.6- Profitability Details

Provides the detailed profitability information for the projects and tasks under the projects with the ability to drill down to child tasks and resources. It provides the comparisons of the profitability to the budgets and forecasts, and period over period changes in the margin, including trending and other details.

Actual Profitability by Project, Revenue Category displays Actual Margin compared to QAGO Actual Margin by project. Forecast Margin displays Forecast by project.

Dimension includes Project Name, Expenditure Category, Revenue Category, Job Name. View includes Margin Percentage, Margin, Revenue Cost and Data.

Actual Profitability Trend and Distribution by Fiscal Period shows Actual Margin Percentage, Actual Revenue and Actual Costs. View includes Trend, Revenue Distribution, Cost Distribution, Margin Distribution and Data.

Profitability Details by Project displays Revenue and Cost Budget, Actual Cost, Actual Revenue, Actual Margin, Actual Margin Percentage, Forecast Revenue, Forecast Cost, Forecast Margin, Forecast Margin Percentage, Actual/Budget Cost Variance, and Forecast/Budget Cost Variance by Project.

1.7- Funding & Billing

Provides the funding and billing details for a project or a group of projects and the tasks under the projects. It provides the overview of agreement amount, funding amount that is assigned to a project, revenue amount that is accrued, invoice amount that is billed, funding changes and the remaining funding that alerts the organizations the potential capacity or efficiency problem.

Funding Summary by Customer by Project by Top Task shows Funding Amounts by the following Dimensions: Project Name, Top Task, and Customer Name. Amounts can be graphically displayed as well.

Remaining Funding Amount for Active Projects displays Funding Amount, Revenue Amount, Remaining Funding Amount, and Remaining Funding Amount Percentage.

Funding Details by Customer by Project by Top Task shows Initial Funding, Additional Funding, Adjustment Funding, Cancelled Funding and Net Funding by the following Dimensions: Project Name, Top Task, and Customer Name.

Lost Funding for Closed Projects shows Funding Amount, Revenue Amount and Lost Funding for closed projects. Includes Project Organization.    

Billing Summary by Project by Customer shows Agreement Amount, Invoice Amount, Approved Invoice Amount, Number of Approved Invoices, Unapproved Invoices Amount, Number of Unapproved Invoices, Unearned Revenue and Unbilled Receivables by Project and Customer.

Hidden Dashboard Pages

By default, the hidden Dashboard Pages do not display within their application area. They can be added to the application area. The hidden pages below contain Transaction Details

1.8- Cost Transactions

Provides detailed cost transactions at expenditure date and item level for a given project, and resource. This dashboard is designed to provide weekly or daily cost transactions report.

Project Cost Transaction Details displays cost data by Fiscal Date, Project Name, Expenditure Organization, Incurred by Person, Supplier Name, Quantity, UOM, Raw Cost, Burden Cost, Total Cost, Currency, Resource Type, Expenditure Category, Billable Flag, and Capitalizable Flag. All Data may be displayed or can be sorted. Filters can be used to refine the data displayed. Data can be downloaded to Excel.

1.9- Revenue Transactions

Provides detailed revenue transactions at expenditure date and item level for a given project, and resource. This dashboard is designed to provide weekly or daily revenue transactions report.

Project Revenue Transaction Details displays data by Fiscal Date, Project Name, Project Organization, Incurred by Person, Job Name, Revenue Amount, Currency, Work Type, Resource Type, Revenue Category and Revenue Transfer Status. All Data may be displayed or can be sorted. Filters can be used to refine the data displayed. Data may be downloaded to Excel, or saved off to a ‘Briefing Book’, which either statically or in updatable format.

1.9a – Budget Transactions

Provides detailed budget transactions at budget type, version and budget period level .

Budget Transactions by Project display data by Project Name, Budget Type, Budget Status, Budget Name, Budget Version, Currency, UOM, Budget Line, Original Budget Cost, Original Budget Revenue, Current Budget Cost, and Current Budget Revenue. All Data may be displayed or can be sorted. Filters can be used to refine the data displayed. Data may be downloaded to Excel.

Summary

The information above should provide the reader with sufficient information on the Project Management application area within Project Analytics to know about the breadth of the reporting capabilities for that part of Project Analytics.

Next Up: Please return soon for the next Project Analytics summary blog, this time for Project Executives.

Executing multiple projects for one customer is common practice for many project-based organizations. But what happens when the time comes to invoice your customer for work performed? Native Oracle Projects allows you to generate only one invoice per project. So, multiple projects lead to multiple invoices. For many organizations, this involves hundreds, maybe thousands of invoices being processed each month. Invoicing for such complex situations is extremely daunting, expensive and time consuming. Each invoice needs to be generated, approved, issued, mailed, processed, reconciled and audited. Not only is this a time and money waster for you but your customer is on the receiving end of this accounting nightmare.

Native Oracle Project Billing does a good job of calculating and generating your draft invoices but many companies need the power to consolidate invoices at a higher level than a project. Seeing this requirement over and over, Project Partners developed a solution to streamline the often complex project invoicing process. It is called Project Partners Consolidated Invoicing. Consolidated Invoicing is included in the Project Partners Invoicing product offering designed to simplify the various customer billing mandates facing project organizations today.

Consolidated Invoicing is a simple solution that does not involve changes to your current Oracle Projects setup or configurations. This solution simply extends the standard invoicing functionality of Oracle Project Billing and Oracle Receivables, therefore requiring no additional training for your users. By utilizing the same invoice processes and review screens currently in use by your project managers and accountants today, such as Invoice Review, Generate Draft Invoices, Interface to Receivables, Autoinvoice import etc., Consolidated Invoicing allows you to consolidate multiple project invoices into one single invoice. You can issue one monthly invoice to a customer at a summary level, with back-up details that break the charges down by project. Your options for consolidation include invoicing across multiple projects, programs, agreements, contracts, or customer “bill to” levels.

With Consolidated Invoicing, project invoicing can be simplified and your project managers and accountants can refocus on activities that add real value to your organization. In addition, your customers receive one invoice from which to pay and the reconciliation of your customer accounts becomes almost seamless. Customers that have implemented this solution have seen time savings of up to 100 hours per invoicing cycle which translates to a cost savings of up to 80%. A solution any project based organization with many projects should consider. Make your project invoicing easier using Project Partners Consolidated Invoicing.

Stay tuned for future blogs on Credit Memo Consolidation and Invoice Formatting and Printing – two additional offerings included in Project Partners Invoicing designed to make project billing easy!

Invoice Consolidation Overview: