Project Partners Blog

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 need to issue a credit memo is common everyday practice for all companies. When the invoice being credited is recent, or the credit is an easy one-to-one (credit memo to invoice) match, this process should be fairly simple. But what happens when you need to issue a credit to your customer months after your invoice has been paid, accounting periods have been closed and information has been archived? What if you need to issue an on-account credit not associated with any particular invoice but rather just a credit to the customer or a credit to the project? What if you want to issue a credit along with your current draft invoices rather than for the original paid invoice? Using standard functionality in Oracle Projects, all credit memos created, whether for canceling an invoice or for correcting an item on a previous invoice, are handled by creating a credit memo that can only be applied against the original invoice. This happens even if the original invoice has already been paid. There is little flexibility in issuing credits not directly associated with the original invoice. Read the rest of this entry »

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:

One of the biggest challenges that Project Managers (PMs) face in managing a project is weeding out mischarges to their projects. This issue is particularly aggravated in the following industries:

1. Construction industry:  Due to very thin margins on project work, any mischarges if not controlled and quickly reversed can wipe out the margins for the project
2. Any Cost Reimbursable type of contract particularly with the Government:  because these charges don’t get caught and then when they show up on invoices, the client starts disputing the invoices based on these mischarges, causing delays in payments and cash flow issues for the project.

The advent of Project Partners User Interface Applications ( a new product that allows you to provide Microsoft(R) Excel based user interfaces for 1 or more related project functions), has provided the ability to provide this critical function for project managers via an easy to use Excel interface for users of Oracle E-Business Suite Projects applications. The following section provides an overview of this solution.

An Excel worksheet will be setup that will allow Project Managers to pick their projects and specify expenditure types and the period for which they would like to review detailed charges.

All charges of the type specified (or all types) and in the current period will then be displayed to the PM with appropriate information for each cost transaction charged. The PM then has the ability to specify “Approved” or “Questionable” for each of the charges. Mass functions for both of these states will be provided to make life easier for the PM.

The screen will also filter out any transactions that had been previously approved by the PM.

This new Status field will be stored as a DFF against the Expenditure Items in Oracle Projects. A perdiodic (nightly) alert will be sent to the HelpDesk/IT/Project Accountant group if “questionable” transactions are found on any project. This group will review the transactions in Oracle’s standard Expenditure Inquiry screen and take appropriate action to research and either clear or transfer out the questionable charges. If the Transactions are cleared as being correctly charged, they are updated in the status field with a “Cleared” status and the PM can subsequently review and approve them.

An additional benefit of this approach, is that when invoices are generated and presented for review to the PMs, they can have a quick report (or another Project Partners User Interface Applications worksheet) wherein they can pull up any “Questionable” charges on the invoice and ensure that they are eliminated or cleared before the invoice goes out to the client.

This is a an example of how Project Partners User Interface Applications, combined with the expertise from Project Partners resources, can help you make life simpler for your Project Managers.

That’s it for now and remember:

There is no better way to manage a business than to Manage by Project.

PS: I welcome all comments / trackbacks / pingbacks / queries to my nascent venture here. I will try and respond to your comments, etc in future entries.