Gidday, This is the latest in a series of blogs I am writing on Abel’s features and what they can do for you. This month’s topic is Project Accounting.
Do you have any R&D projects that you would like to track revenue and expenses for? Or perhaps you would like to track marketing costs for individual trade shows? Do you need to provide detailed analysis when you have received a government grant? Abel’s Project Accounting can help you with these challenges and more.
Many projects such as R&D can easily bleed money with no associated income in the short term so, needless to say, cost control is pretty important. My first experience of this was in 1990 when I worked for a Government Organization in Wellington. We had a large project with all its expenses going to the one account in the General Ledger. My boss wanted a breakdown of the unexpectedly large costs. It took me a month to analyze 2 years of transactions, going back through all the lineflow printouts and paper expense records, and report back with an analysis of 40 plus classifications showing where all the costs had been consumed. At Abel, we really do understand the challenges our customers face. I would have loved to have Abel’s Project Accounting back then.
Our Project Accounting captures your project data within Abel’s financials where the data can then be used by Project Managers to track the financial progress of projects. You can create new Projects in Abel and then all revenues and expenses can be charged to that project as part of your normal transaction processing.
Whereas standard accounting is about monitoring financial progress of organizations or parts of organizations over defined time periods (weeks, months, quarters and years), projects differ. Projects often cross organizational boundaries, may last for anything from a few days or weeks to a number of years, during which time budgets may be revised many times. They may also be one of a number of projects that make up a larger overall project or program.
You can create budgets for projects in the same way as you can for a business unit. This improves project tracking and control, helps you make timely decisions and gives you early warning of any issues.
With Abel’s Project Accounting you can :
- Create project budgets.
- Capture project data as part of your normal transaction processing.
- Obtain full financial accounting for each project.
- Identify cost overruns earlier and in detail.
- Provide detailed analysis to management or externally e.g. for a grant you have received.
- More accurately budget for similar projects in the future.
If you want to know more about Abel’s Project Accounting and how it can help your business please contact your Abel Consultant or an Abel Distributor.
Until next time.
Rik