Great addition @lubos I’m very happy to see this model finally implemented. It is still early days but these are my suggestions for now.
Track Project Production Costs
When you use inventory for a job/project through the Production Orders, the system should be able to record the consumption of the inventory for the related project.
To consume inventory to create another inventory item (Customised finished or WIP item) for a project, I would use the Production Orders to transfer the value of the input inventory items and other non-inventory costs to the Project inventory item(s) (finished/WIP item). There is therefore the need to select Projects for Production Orders
to link production costs with the associated projects (finished or WIP item).
Project Estimate
Can we track project costs for the following cost categories?
- Direct materials: Tracked from Inventory Items consumed in production charged to the project
- Direct Labour: Tracked from Payslip/Timesheets (Earning/Contribution items charged to the project)
- Direct expenses and Overhead: All other costs consumed in production or charged to the project from (receipt, invoices, expense claims and others)
Drill down the categories to see a list of transactions.
Can a user enter a Project estimate for the above cost categories and check the estimate with actual figures? That would be great for planning projects and also see where improvements could be made for efficiency the next time.
Display amounts $ and percentage % for the variance (estimate vs Actuals). For e.g., Variance is $ 500.00 (2%) Display both the amount and Percentage under one column. See inserted screenshot below
Link Projects to Customers
You can create a custom field to capture customer names but a default field that displays a list of customers to select from would be a better option. This would enable the display of a column in the Customers tab to show the number of projects for every customer which can be drilled down to see projects summary for the customer. See inserted screenshot for the Idea.
The customer name will also show as a column in the project tab. We may also have a field to link projects to Sales orders just for the purpose of tracking the number of projects being executed for a Sales Order.
Also, automatically create a control account named Projects In progress which is made up of accounts for customers to hold all the expenses and consumed inventory for service projects/jobs. Balances of these accounts will be moved to the income statements after billing the customer.
Finally, I request for the display of profit margin to also have the % profit, for example, $ 684.00 (12%).