Six hurdles stand in the way of your organization effectively using the Project Management and Accounting module (PMA). This article outlines those hurdles and explains how to overcome them.
Originally published in H1 2018 D365UG/AXUG Magazine
The Project Management and Accounting module (PMA) is a very powerful module that can be used for a wide range of business applications and scenarios. It supports all processes in a company’s supply chain, including starting with the purchase of products and services, the planning and scheduling of resources, and the production of goods until the sale of goods and services.
The use of the PMA module is thereby not limited to companies operating in the production industry but is also often used in service industry companies. You do not need to be a project-driven company to benefit from the use of this module, and you can even use it for internal cost analyzing and tracking purposes only.
Hurdles
The wide range and flexibility of the PMA module comes, however, at a price in the form of hurdles that you have to jump over before you can make use of it.
HURDLE 1: The PMA module is primarily not a module for accountants
Even though the PMA module contains the name “accounting,” the first hurdle that you have to get across is realizing that this module is not primarily a module for accountants but rather a module that supports operative supply chain-related business processes.
HURDLE 2: Structures
The PMA module relies heavily on structures that you define, e.g. for your main and subprojects and for arranging your work. Before you make use of the module, spend some time on defining those structures and take the following tips and tricks into account:
- Make use of templates for setting up your projects and your project work.
- Ensure that your project numbers do not overlap, especially when working with inter-company projects.
- Link your projects to a financial project dimension, as it alleviates the subsequent analysis of your projects.
- Be aware that the sub-projects inherit the financial dimension of your main projects.
- Be careful with extending the project number length and consider repercussions on your financial dimensions.
- Be aware that most project reports are built on project categories and cannot report on category groups.
- Try to include a Customer level into your project structure, as it eases reporting and tax setup.
HURDLE 3: Be clear on what you want to get out of the PMA module
You can find numerous reports and inquiry forms in the PMA module. Yet, when it comes to analyzing projects, you might notice that the standard reports do not exactly match your reporting requirements and need to be extended. To avoid such extensions, default “Practice Manager” Power BI reports have been made available that provide Users with flexible filtering and reporting functionalities within and across legal entities. Despite the fact that such reporting functionalities are available, carefully check them before you put the module into operation to ensure that they include all the data you need.
HURDLE 4: Get an accountant involved
Albeit the module is not primarily a module for accountants, a lot of accounting related setups have to be made. Among others, transaction types, category groups, categories, and project groups need to be set up that define the resulting accounting transactions. To get this right, get an accountant involved in the module setup process from the very beginning.
HURDLE 5: Prevent rubbish
To prevent the wrong Users posting the wrong categories on specific projects, make use of project validation functionalities. In addition, if you regularly record travel expenses for projects, make use of project expense policies and the expense policies that are available in the expense management module to avoid “rubbish” being recorded on your projects. Finally, if you work with Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations and record working times for your projects, make use of timesheet policies to ensure that Users enter their minimum or maximum working time.
HURDLE 6: Project planning and budgeting
The module ships with several different planning and budgeting forms.
First, there is the work breakdown structure (WBS) form that allows very detailed planning of project tasks and nicely integrates with the resource scheduling functionality and Microsoft Project. A disadvantage of the WBS is that it does not prevent budget overruns and should thus be used in combination with the other budgeting forms.
The second available project planning and budgeting forms are the various project forecast forms that allow planning and budgeting for hour, expense, item, fee, and on-account transactions. Using those forecast forms in combination with the forecast reduction functionality helps in preventing budget overruns. The forecast forms are, however, more complex in terms of usability, especially when it comes to tracking budget changes.
For that reason, a third project budget form is available, which ships with a built-in workflow functionality that allows incorporating explicit approvals of project budget changes.
As the forecast forms are integrated with the ledger budgeting module, you also can synchronize your project budgets with the ledger budgets if required.
Most companies do not have to use all the different planning and budgeting forms at the same time. Before starting to make use of the project planning and budgeting functionality, carefully evaluate which of the different planning and budgeting forms you need to avoid unnecessary planning and controlling work.
Conclusion
If you carefully consider and evaluate the different hurdles that I mentioned, you will certainly make it to the finishing line and take advantage of the great functionalities that are available in the PMA module.