Category: Dynamics AX 2012

Monitoring the utilization rates of the resources in projects in a very important aspect of every service based organization today. The more the resource is utilized, the more are the number of billable hours to the customers.

Every organization today wants each of its project resources to be utilized optimally.

With Microsoft dynamics AX 2012, you can track it all with few simple and easy steps.

Let us learn today what are the setups and processes involved in arriving at the utilization rates of resources in AX 2012.

Utilization rate signifies the % of time that a workers engages in a billable/productive assignment in a given working period. Ideally the workers utilization rate is calculated by dividing the number of billable hours by the total working hours in that working period.

In dynamics AX, we can calculate both billable and efficiency rates when calculating the utilization rate.

Billable rate – The billable rate is the difference between billable hours and non-billable hours.

Efficiency rate – The efficiency rate is the difference between productive hours vs. non-productive hours or norm hours. Non-productive hours are never chargeable to a customer.

Setup to calculate the billable and efficiency rates for projects:

We can setup the required parameters in the Project accounting parameters form as shown below.

We can setup the definition of billable rate as per our business requirement for each of the project types. The different definitions are as below.

Utilization – Hours registered on the selected project type are always billable or efficient utilization.

Burden – Hours registered on the selected project type are always non billable or non-efficient utilization.

According to line property : Line property of each transaction registered on the selected project type decides if the hours are billable/efficient.

Not included – Hours are never considered in billable / efficiency utilization.

In the screenshot above, I have setup the values as per my requirements. Assume that for the period of 01/01/2012 to 01/15/2012, I have worked on an internal project for 10 hours and 65 hours on a time and material project.

Let us now take a look at the billable rate report and the form and analyze the data in them.

Go to Reports > Hours > Billable rate > Worker Hour utilization.

The utilization rate for the employee is 86.67% which as 65(total billable hours) is 86.67 % of 75 which is the total consumed hours by the employee.

Also, you can verify the hour utilization details can be viewed from  Worker > Select the worker > Project Management tab > Hour utilization button.

Simple, yet good !

Thanks

Keep DAXING

Hi Guys,

Just another quick post here on the functionality of adjusting project transactions even after they are invoiced. Most of us must be aware of this.

In Ax 2009 never allowed adjusting or correcting a project transactions which was already invoiced. This can be a very useful requirement across many industries as chances of errors during invoicing is very likely in services organizations.

In AX 2012, system now allows to edit invoiced project transactions. Make sure the following to be able to do adjust invoiced project transactions.

• Go to Project management and accounting > Setup > Parameters.
• Mark the Invoiced check box as shown below.

• Now, when you perform adjustment from Periodic > Adjustments form, you will notice the “Invoiced” option.

• With that selected, if you select the records for adjustments by providing the filtration criteria, system will fetch the invoiced transactions also where you can make the necessary adjustments.

Stay tuned for some very interesting posts in coming few days.

Thanks

Keep DAXING

Friends,

Most of us must be aware of this functionality getting introduced in AX 2012. I will just provide a high level overview of it in this post.

In AX 2009, the expense categories were never shared between legal entities which was clearly a deficiency of AX 09. This functionality will help in may scenarios where in employees of the organization work on requirements of subsidiaries/other legal entities. This will allow them to incur expenses on behalf of the companies which they do not work for.

Let us see the step to setup a shared category in AX 2012 and verify how it can be used across any entity of the enterprise.

• Navigate to Legal entity CEU > Project Management and accounting > Setup > Categories > Shared Categories.
• Create a new record with ID = SharedExpCat and name = Shared expense category.
• Select the “Can be used in Projects”, “Can be used in production”, “Can be used in expense” check boxes to be able to use this shared expense categories in Projects, production and expense respectively.
• Let us select the Expense type as Car rental.

• In AX 2012, we need to define categories in the shared category form before we can create those in the project categories. Once we have the categories defined in the Shared categories screen, they will be available in all the legal entities for use.

Let me know if you need more information about the shared categories and their usage in AX 2012.

Thanks

Keep DAXING

Here is quick post on the item requirement functionality of the project management and accounting module of Microsoft dynamics AX.

The item requirement functionality plays a very important role for the project based organizations who have their own inventory, or have their own production unit for items/sub items which they consume, and don’t want to consume them immediately in the projects.

In today’s post i will give an insight and step by step guide lines to handle item requirements in projects.

The item requirement functionality is basically used for reserving items in the company’s own inventory(a certain amount or unit of items) for a project and then consume when it is needed. Dynamics AX system will then create separate deliveries on each packing slips. This also means that an item requirement can be consumed partially.

It is created and managed as a sales order line on single sales order that is associated with that specific project. It also allows creating purchase orders and production orders from an item requirement.

Follow the steps below to create and process an item requirement in dynamics AX.

• Navigate to Project management and accounting > Common > Projects > All projects
• Select the project.
• Click Manage > New > Item task > Item requirement.

• Create new record and create a line with Item number 1201(Home theater system 2.1) for a quantity of 20.00. If you want to charge this item to the customer in the project,select the line property accordingly.

• Now Notice that it will create a sales order with one line automatically. Screenshot below. Also look the inventory transaction snapshot at this point.

• Now let us pick 20.00 quantities in two iterations(5.00 and 15.00) of the item in the project and post the packing slip. To do this,
• Click Posting > Picking list. Update the same.
• Click Posting > Picking list registration. Update the same.
• Click Posting > Packing slip.
• Now notice that the sales order status is changed to Invoiced.
• Also take a look at the inventory transaction and posted project transaction snapshots.

• Finally, if you would like create one more item requirement in the project using the above steps only, you will notice that a new line gets created in the same sales order.

The difference between an inventory item journal and an item requirement in a project is that, an item requirement will be useful when the purpose is not consume items in the project immediately, and rather reserve them in the inventory and consume them partially when needed. Where as an item journal will be preferable to enter and post and quick item consumption in a project.

There are several advantages that users can take when using the item requirements functionality such as the BOM explosion, Net requirements analysis etc.

Please let me know if you need more clarification on this functionality.

Are you facing issues when migrating your projects from your legacy ERP system to Microsoft dynamics AX 2012?

1. Want to retain all the project details ?
2. Want to record the accumulated or progress invoices from project start date to the date of migration?
3. Want to record costs and accrue revenue or want to post the costs to profit and loss ?
4. Finally want to do all these without affecting the general ledger ?

You can do all these easily in Microsoft dynamics AX 2012. Learn how which i posted in one of my earlier posts.

https://sandeepchaudhury.wordpress.com/2011/07/24/what-is-new-in-ax-2012-the-project-begining-balances/

Let me know if you need more detailed help on these.

Thanks

Sandeep, Keep DAXING :)

Friends,

In today’s post, I will discuss a small but important functionality called the customer advance also referred as pre-bill for projects in Microsoft dynamics AX 2012.

Sometimes projects require a significant financial investment and may need some amount to be requested from the customer.The  Customer advance is an option using which customer advance payments can be requested on account of the projects. This can be done for both fixed price and time and material projects in dynamics AX 2012.

The advance payment can be requested to the customer as a percentage of the total project original budget at any time during the project. It can also be requested as a flat amount. The project category and the activity also can be specified during raising the customer advance.

When user creates a pre-bill transaction, system automatically creates an invoice proposal, which is then submitted for necessary approval. Once approved, this becomes an On account amount with transaction origin as a Prepayment.
With a prepayment existing in a project, say $10,000.00 in Sep, 2011, when you process an invoice of $20,000.00 later in Oct, 2011, you will notice an additional invoice proposal line showing up the prepayment amount causing the total invoice header
amount to be $10,000.00(20,000-10,000).

Let us now go through the steps to see how it works is dynamics AX 2012.

• Let us say we have a project 90001 in CONTOSO data set.
• Select the project and click Manage > Bill > Customer advance on the action pane.

• Click New.
• Enter category and activity if you have/want any. I will just go with requesting the advance for the project as a whole.
• Enter Description = Advance towards project 90001.
• Now, as I depicted above, the amount can be requested as a flat amount or even as a % of the total project budget. If you have set up a project original budget, you can just specify a % value and system will calculate the total advances amount which is to be requested.
• In this scenario, I will just proceed by specifying a flat amount, say $20,000.00.
• Verify that Total customer advance invoice amount = $20,000.
• Click OK button.

• Notice that, an infolog shows up  and Invoice proposals screen opens up as shown in screen below.

• Verify the details of the invoice proposal and then submit it for approval.
• Now the approver will verify the customer advance request and once it is approved, on account transaction will be created for the project 90001 by the system.
• Let us verify this by going to projects  and selecting 90001.
• Click Manage > Bill > On Account Transactions and verify that the on account record is created.

• Let us now post and simple hour journal of total amount of $25000 and try to process the invoice for the project and analyze the impact of the customer advance.
• In my scenario, I posted an hour journal with total amount = $25,000.00.
• Now select the project and click Manage > Bill > Invoice processing.
• Verify that the total amount available to invoice is (25,000-20,000) = $5,000. This indicates that, the invoice processing automatically takes the advance amount into consideration and deduct it from the current invoice amount to present the total amount that will be invoiced.

That is it about pre-billing functionality for projects in Microsoft dynamics AX 2012. Do let me know questions and clarifications on this.

Thanks

Keep DAXING :)

Sometimes in business, customers need their invoices to be presented in a specific format different from the regular project invoices. For example , customers may need all the billable transactions to be grouped separately (e.g., Item, Labor, Expenses etc.) and presented in the invoice.

Companies also sometimes wants to mention ad-hoc texts (Courtesy texts etc.) before and after the invoice document to be printed.

All of these additional formating(ad-hoc formatting) of project invoices can be can be done in AX 2012 at run time during invoice processing very easily without having the need to customize the reports and involve additional development costs.

In today’s post I will explain this functionality in AX 2012 and take you through the steps.

• Assume that the project and project contract are ready and we have some transactions already posted on them which are pending for invoicing. Say that the project 10001 in CONTOSO data has some hour, expense and item transactions to be invoiced.
• Let us start from the invoice processing for this project.
• Navigate to Project management and accounting > All Projects.
• Select project 10001 and click Manage tab > Bill > invoice processing. Refer to screen below.

• See the invoice processing screen that opens and shows all the available transactions for billing. I have selected few of then in the lower grid for billing Screen below.

• Now click the New Invoice proposal button. Verify that info log shows up and the invoice proposal screen opens up as shown in screen below.

Hi Friends,

Its been a long time coming here. Work keeps all of us busy. :)

In today’s post , I will take you through a new functionality and it’s concept called Grants in the Project accounting and management module of dynamics AX 2012. In one of my earlier posts, I introduced and explained about the new advanced funding functionality in dynamics AX 2012 where in customers/users can set up split funding of projects/contracts. They can attach more than one funding source which can be of different types such as Customers, On Hold, Grants, Organization etc.

Let us discuss the Grant funding source type out of these different funding sources in this post. We will also discuss the significance of introducing the Grants in AX 2012, how to create and manage grants  and their billing or utilization related stuff in projects.

A grant in dynamics AX 2012 represents a fund designated by federal government or local government authorities for a specific purpose/project and usually there are restrictions imposed on how the grant can be spent. This type of funding source gains attention in the public sector and research firms. They may also apply for a grant to do undertake a sponsored project and will request a grant amount when applying the grant. The awarded grant amount could be equal or less than the applied amount.

Now let us assume that we as a construction company will apply for a sponsorship grant to install high-end security features at the Basketball stadium and we will apply this to the Basket ball stadium customer in CONTOSO data. Let us go through the steps to create and maintain grants in AX 2012.

1. Navigate to Project Accounting and Management > Common > Grants > Grants.
2. Click New > Grant on the action pane.
3. Fill in the required details to complete the grant. See the screens below for the sequence of data.

Now let us discuss some of the key terms while setting up the grant.

The Contact Information section includes all contact information about the organization that provided the grant and your staff members which are responsible for managing the grant.

Under the Dates and Deadlines section, define all the important dates which are required for the grant such as the requested, approved, awarded, expiry, renewal date etc.

Under the Setup section there are few important parameters which needs to be setup.

Matching Type : This field is required when matching of funds are required in a particular grant. Matching funds are the money/resource that the company which is awarded the grant needs to spend to match the amount which is awarded. The matching percent and matching amount gets calculated from the selection of matching type. This signifies that the grant terms requires that the awarded company will spend certain amount from its budget.

The State mandate, Federal mandate and CFDA are all country specific fields(for United states) and are required and when the primary address of the organization is USA.

This is it in today’s post. There are several fields for which data can be setup for the grants and explaining all of them here will get me writing and writing and writing. Please feel free to ask me back if you do not understand the significance of any of the fields in setting up a grant and any other generic questions about grants in AX 2012 and their usage.

keep watching for my next post which will explain How to use a grant and a customer as funding sources in a project and how the billing for the grant will be carried out. I will explain all of it in detail.

Have a nice day.

Thanks

Keep DAXING :)