Hands on AX 2012- All about budgeting functionality for projects in Microsoft dynamics AX 2012

Hello friends,

In this post of mine, I will explain all about the new budgeting functionality for projects in AX 2012.

In AX 2009, we could do only forecasting of projects and then consider that as the project budget. There was not a well defined procedure for end to end budgeting of projects ( When i say end to end, it involves forecasting the project costs and revenues, creating budgets based on the forecasts, submitting the budget for approval, automatic budget overrun control, budget revisions etc).

Now in AX 2012, MS has done a tremendous job in the project budgeting functionality and i must say, this can be used out of box for implementations without requiring any(Major) customizations.

Let us now look at all the aspects of this one by one below.

Let us assume that we have a fixed price project TEST_BUD_01.

1. Setup the project budget parameters:

• The budget control parameters can be set both at a global level and at the project level. To enable the budget control functionality for all the projects at a common place, go to Project Management  and Accounting > Setup > Project management and accounting parameters > Cost control link(On left pane).
• Please see the screenshot below for the various fields for the budget control. Check mark the “Use budget control” check box
• Set Transaction type to be controlled = Revenue and costs.
• Budget overrun default = disallow overruns. Please refer to screenshot below.

2. Create and submit the project budget:

• Go to Project Management  and Accounting > Common > All Projects.
• Select the project for which we will create the budget. (TEST_BUD_01).
• Click on tab Plan and click Budget > Project budget. Please see the screenshot below.
• Now on the Project budget form, select forecast models Original budget = OrigCash and Remaining budget = RemCash.
• Now select a budget basis from the 3 options which are ,
  Entry – Enter the Cost and revenue budgets manually. Forecast – Select a forecast model and the project forecasts will be converted to budget. Project transactions – Select this if your want to budget your current project based on the transactions of any existing project.
• Depending on the selection of the basis of the budget, the budget lines budget lines will be entered.
• In our case we will create the project forecasts and select the budget basis as Forecast. Below screenshot shows the project budgets which are created from the forecasts when clicked on the Load Values button.
• Click on the Submit button(Workflow Yellow bar) to submit the budget for required approval.
• Run the workflow tutorial form to kick off the workflow and after the record is processed in workflow, come back to the project budgets form and approve it making yourself as the approver for TEST purpose.
• Now notice the work flowinfolog which says the budget is committed to the project.

4. Post project transactions:

• I will not list out the steps to post the project transactions here as we all know about it. Let us say i will post 155  hours against category Design. With this let us verify the project budget balances.
• Go to Project TEST_BUD_01 and click on Plan > Project budget.
• Now on the Project budgets form, click Related information > Project budget balances.

Please see the screen below which shows the actual costs incurred and the remaining balances in the project budget.

• 

6. Create and submit/Approve budget revisions:

• The project budgets can be revised(+/-) as the project progresses depending on the project requirements.
• To revise the project budget, Go to the Project budgets form of the project and click on Revise > New Revision.
• On the Project budget revision form, enter values in revision amount field. This Value can be +ve or -ve. If you want to increase the budget, give a +ve amount and the budget will be increased by that amount and you can see the updated value in New budget field. Provide a -ve value if you want to reduce the budget.
• Enter the reviosn amounts as below.

• Now after making necessary revisions, click Submit button to submit the budget for approval.
• Once the revised budget is approved, the new values will be committed as the project budget.

7. View revision history:

• A complete history of all the budget revisions can be viewed at Revision > Revisions on the Project budget form.
• Please see the screen below which depicts that he original budget and the revised amount and the new budget for both cost and revenues.

Well, this is all about project budgets from my side. Let me know your questions and comments and i will be glad to answer you.

Thanks

Keep DAXING 🙂