When Business Central launched back in 2018, some features did not come across from Navision. The recommendation for these business sectors was to use a bridging software and get used to utilizing one or more tools in order to get where you need to go. Things have how changed as Microsoft is continually producing new features for Business Central. This includes adding functionality from the Navision days and expanding to new areas that normally would have only happened through a partner integration. The jobs module is a great case of one of those features that has rapidly become quite usable.
In the past, the recommendation was to track jobs using dimensions, allowing for quick reporting on a set of tasks that affect the G/L. This functionality remains the same, but Microsoft has added the capability to create and design a job from scratch within the system.
Beginning with the Job Card, we have a few options to select the customer and a bill-to party for the project. The bill-to party can change with every invoice sent based on the project, but there can only be one customer per job.
Revealing more of the job informs us that there are planning lines that are quite a bit different from the standard debits and credits. Within each planning line (line 1010 as an example) there can be budgeting lines, billable lines or a hybrid of the two. A budgeting line is an internal line item used for costs or information that do not end up going to the customer. Billable lines are the exact opposite. On a fixed cost project, budget lines can be used to track internal costs to make sure that the project is profitable while keeping a small set of fixed billable lines to populate the eventual invoice to the customer. Finally, there is a composite budget and billable line.
This line item populates what is actually seen in job task number 1010, but there can be as many line items consolidated on a line in the job card as makes sense for your business purpose. Using a budgeting and billing line, we can set a price according to customer specifications for the job, as a percentage of our cost (1.10x our cost etc.) or a custom amount as is shown above. Finally, linking back to the old way of doing things in Business Central, we can have a ton of flexibility when it comes to reporting and inputting information from the job into the G/L.
To ensure information is getting into your books with the correct controls in mind, Business Central allows the finance team to set up their WIP method and posting set up as well as the job posting group for any perspective job. From the job card, project managers and invested parties can quickly look to see what portion of the job has been posted as WIP or recognized giving a greater level of visibility that is not available in most other ERPs. Finally, for jobs that are created with multiple currencies, the Foreign Trade section allows for multiple policies to be used to track the costs and the price to the customer separately.
If you would like to learn more about job cards in Business Central, please contact us at Rimrock and one of our consultants would be happy to help.
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