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Posts by Rhiannon Schaumburg:

Solve Common Problems with Deltek Vantagepoint AP Voucher Lookup

Posted by Rhiannon Schaumburg on April 24, 2025

04-24 DVP AP Vouchers

For accounting professionals, the AP voucher is the single source of truth for tracking supplier invoices. An AP voucher has information from a supplier like the firm amount that is due, terms for payment, signatures of authorized firm representatives, and more. Keeping this information up to date and correct is critical, however, errors and other changes do occur.

  • Is there an invoice that was accidentally entered twice and one needs to be voided/reversed?
  • Was tax, shipping or another amount missing on an invoice and now it is already posted?
  • Was an invoice amount entered incorrectly and it needs to be corrected?

If this sounds familiar, it’s because these are all common issues that come up in the AP world. Typically, AP associates will enter a new voucher to correct these items and then reverse or add to/subtract from the value of an original invoice. By doing this, two vouchers are entered for the same invoice number, often by adding a letter or number to the original invoice number. When the invoice is paid, the associate needs to remember to select both vouchers to pay the entire correct amount of the invoice. In the case of a duplicate invoice, there isn’t a “void voucher” option like there is void check or void client invoices.

However, there is a better solution - utilize “Voucher Lookup” to edit an AP voucher easily & smoothly!

Using Deltek Vantagepoint AP Voucher Lookup

Once an AP Voucher is posted in Deltek Vantagepoint, it isn’t very evident that there is an option to edit the voucher. But there is! Voucher lookup is a great tool that is not as widely used as it should be.

When using AP Voucher lookup, Vantagepoint “attaches” the new voucher detail lines to the original voucher by utilizing the same voucher number and voucher header. When the corrected voucher is attached to the original there won’t be two vouchers for the same invoice to reconcile in vendor review or select in payment processing! As a result,

Examples of Deltek Vantagepoint AP Voucher Lookup:

Issue 1: Whoops! Two vouchers were entered for the same invoice and one of them needs to be reversed.

Voucher Lookup_01

Solution: Enter a new AP transaction, use voucher lookup, and reverse the original lines. This AP entry will be linked or “attached” to the original voucher, not creating a new voucher but editing the original, making a zero-dollar total invoice. The steps are as follows:

  1. Go to Transaction Center > Transaction Entry > AP Vouchers. Either start a new batch (if using batches) or a new transaction (if using single transaction posting).
  2. Select the vendor. Don’t enter the rest of the header data!
  3. Go to the top right under “Other Actions” and select “Voucher Lookup”.
    1. A list of the vouchers for this vendor will appear.
    2. Select the voucher for the invoice that needs to be edited.
    3. In the top of the list there is a search box that can be used to find an amount, voucher or invoice number and it will search for any matches from the existing vouchers.
  4. Next, select the voucher that requires editing. The voucher header information will populate from the original voucher… this is where the linking comes in.
  5. At this point, anything entered in the voucher details below will add to the original voucher line items. If the original entry had three lines and another is added, four lines will appear in the voucher review.
  6. In this example, the duplicate voucher needs to be reversed entirely.
    1. To reverse lines, go back to “Other Actions”, select “Copy/Reverse Lines”.
    2. Check the box in the top header row to select all voucher detail lines.
    3. Click “Reverse All”.
    4. This selection will bring these lines into the voucher detail as a negative, using the same project coding. Which is simple, FAST, and does not require re-keying of line items!

      Voucher Lookup_02
  7. Post voucher as usual.
  8. In Voucher Review, the original line items and the additional line items entered during the Voucher Lookup will appear.
  9. In this example, the overall voucher is now zero and the total lines in the voucher are 6.

Voucher Lookup_03

Issue 2: Need to add an additional line for tax, shipping or other charges missed on original entry?

Solution: Do all steps from above except for step 6 - don’t use the Copy/Reverse function. Simply add the needed lines to the voucher detail in the Project Information grid. Any lines that are added will link/attach to the original voucher and add/subtract to the original voucher amount.

Issue 3: Need to correct an amount in the original voucher?

Solution: Do everything above, including Copy/Reversing Lines. It is suggested to reverse the line(s) that were entered incorrectly and then enter the correct amount so there is a good audit trail. After reversing the line(s) that were entered in error, add the correcting lines in the Project Information grid on the same voucher. Every line that is reversed and/or added will still link/attach to the original voucher and add/subtract to the original voucher amount.

Solve Common Accounting Challenges with Deltek Vantagepoint

Deltek Vantagepoint does more than making AP voucher corrections easy. Check out this webinar to learn about 15 Must-Know Features to Supercharge your Vantagepoint Efficiency, and make sure to explore all the free Vantagepoint content available on the Full Sail Partners’ website.

 

Effectively Manage Your Professional Services Firm Using Project Accounting

Posted by Rhiannon Schaumburg on September 19, 2024

09-12-24 DVP Effectively Manage Your Professional Services Firm Using Project Accounting - Banner

When thinking about standard business accounting – what automatically comes to mind? Income statements, balance sheets, departmental budgets, and the various aspects that make up those statements – right? These figures are, of course, very important to know and understand. But that is only part of the whole picture of the health of your professional services firm. How does your firm go about determining how those figures came to be, which projects were profitable, which weren’t, and why? These questions, and many more, can be answered by implementing project accounting for your firm.  

First, What is Project Accounting?

Let’s start by comparing it to standard accounting, which most of us know. Standard accounting manages the financials using a company’s organizational structure – how divisions or departments track things like their G&A, labor, etc. compared to their budgeted amounts on a periodic basis. Project accounting goes deeper and looks closely at the different projects a professional services firm has undertaken, most of which regularly cross departments and might last months or even years.

Let’s say, for example, company X wants to undergo a new green initiative in its office. Standard accounting will keep track of costs for things like the smart electronics to manage lighting and HVAC or the newly hired “Green Officer.” However, what standard accounting doesn’t do is manage the costs for the actual project, i.e. how much did it cost you to achieve your final goal. 

But let’s take this a step further.  Let’s say you need to provide this service to a customer – you’re going to implement that same green initiative at a client site. 

Using Project Accounting, you could also manage, discover, and analyze things like:

  • The amount of time dedicated by project staff and management to build and maintain the project plan, including the phases of work and project hierarchies
  • Tracking of the contract budget/contract status/change orders and add-on services
  • Whether you are effectively utilizing your internal resources
  • Maintaining up-to-date project deadlines and the associated costs of meeting or not meeting those deadlines
  • How percentage of completion is managed and tracked to budget
  • If the project was budgeted correctly, and how what was learned from this project can be used to better manage projects going forward

Outgrowing Your Basic Accounting Solution?

Small professional services firms often rely on simpler accounting software solutions to manage their day-to-day business. One common example is QuickBooks. This product can often serve a company’s needs…for a while. However, these firms will soon find that they are outgrowing the software’s limited capabilities.

J. Carlton Collins, CPA details those limitations in his piece “Practical Advice for Companies That Have Outgrown QuickBooks”.

At a glance, those basic limitations can be summarized as:

  • Limited accounting system features
  • Limited database performance 

For various reasons, the limited accounting functionality and database performance provided by these simpler software products can actually be appealing to these smaller companies initially. But at some point, growing firms will discover that they need accounting software that can grow along with their business. They will need more than limited features and performance.

Need Help While Gaining Growth?

Growth can be defined by many different metrics – for example, an increase in revenues, an increase in number of employees or customers, higher profits, and greater market share, just to name a few. Professional services firms experiencing this sort of growth will eventually need to take that step up to an accounting software solution that will provide them with both standard accounting, as well as project accounting capability.

Take, for example, this advice from Lindsay Diven, Marketing Manager at Full Sail Partners, in her article about “The Importance of Benchmarking in Measuring Business Growth”. She tells us that “by rigorously examining internal operations against recognized standards, firms can pinpoint critical deficiencies and implement strategic changes, ensuring survival and fostering growth in an ever-evolving marketplace.”

As Lindsay says, by utilizing some of the capabilities of a robust project accounting software system, you can start to:

  • Identify Efficiency Gaps
  • Enhance Competitive Advantage
  • Drive Strategic Planning
  • Improve Financial Performance

So, if your firm is expanding, and the sort of growth that we’ve identified above is important to the future of your firm, you should look to us here at Full Sail Partners to help you navigate the next step to support your firm’s growth.

Achieve Success Through Project Accounting

In the end, we are all working toward success for our professional services firm. And to most of us, success means growth – in whichever metric resonates the most with the ongoing health of your firm. So, to achieve that healthy firm growth means managing every minute, as well as every dollar, spent, through project accounting, to obtain that success.

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