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With the New Year approaching, it is a fitting time for accountants and project managers to review the previous year and identify areas of improvement. While we usually think of New Year’s resolutions for our personal lives, there can also be professional ones. Let’s take a look at some of them.

New Year's Resolution for Accountants

For accountants, it’s all about preparing for next year and making changes that streamline and automate processes. Here are the top five resolutions for accountants:

1. Examine the current revenue/earning methods and determine if the firm is in compliance with FASB 606
2. Take a hard look at the organizational structure to determine if changes need to be made
3. Clean-up the firm’s chart of accounts and overhead projects
4. Define the differences between a project administrator and a project controls role
5. Try to learn more about challenges the accounting team experiences and create solutions

New Year’s Resolutions for Project Managers

Project managers must consider how to evaluate the success of projects and how to better manage them. Here are the top five resolutions for project managers:

1. Use the tools within the project management system to better budget and plan projects
2. Elevate the level of project review beyond invoicing to earned value
3. Better record and manage change orders
4. Build a work breakdown structure based on fee and scope
5. Encourage the team and peers to be timely in submitting time and expense

Start 2018 Off Right!

The New Year brings fresh opportunity to improve a firm’s operations and efficiency. Accountants and project managers must first take time to determine what areas need adjustment or refinement. Full Sail Partners can help! Let us conduct a Navigational Analysis to pinpoint those areas and start 2018 off right. 

Ready or not, here year-end comes. With some organization and planning, however, it doesn’t have to be stressful. Let’s look at some critical tasks your firm should complete as part of the year-end process.

Preparing to Close 2017

First off, the most important task is to document your year-end procedures. Not only those performed in your Deltek system, but all of them so that you have a comprehensive guide to refer to on a year to year basis. You should also create a calendar and develop a year-end checklist as part of your year-end procedures.

Some of the more common year-end tasks for most companies are:

• Reconcile all cash accounts - Verify all transactions have been posted into Vision/DPS to ensure your general ledger balance matches your bank statements adjusting as required.
• Final invoicing – Process all client invoices for the fiscal year.
• Review outstanding accounts receivable - Follow up with clients who have outstanding accounts receivable beyond 30 days. Send past due statements and give them a call. Enter the results of your collection efforts in the comments section of Deltek Vision or Deltek for Professional Services (DPS) invoice review. Year-end is an excellent time to collect your outstanding receivables. If you determine there is uncollectable accounts receivable, be sure to write those invoices off.
• Review unbilled detail - Time and expense transactions that cannot be invoiced to clients should be written off at this time.
• Fixed assets – Fixed assets are larger purchases that are made throughout the year (i.e. equipment, automobiles, furniture, computers, etc.). Are all fixed assets reported on the balance sheet still owned? If not, record the sale or disposal of these fixed assets. Additionally, verify the depreciation on your fixed assets and make any necessary adjustments.
• Employee expenses and accounts payable - Verify that all accounts payable vouchers have been recorded in Vision or DPS. Make your 401(k), SEP IRA, and simple IRA contributions, if you have not done so. Also, try to pay all your vendors and employee expense reports by year-end.
• Notes payable - Verify notes payable (i.e. loans) amounts on your balance sheet match the statements from your lenders adjusting if necessary.
• W-9s – Order 1099 forms and make sure all W-9s from your vendors and/or contractors that are paid $600 or more throughout the year are on file. Don’t forget, 1099s should be mailed on January 31st. 1099 forms can be purchased from most office supply stores or you can order them for free from the IRS (gov).
• W-2s –If you run payroll in Vision or DPS, you’ll need to order W-2 forms which can be purchased from most office supply stores. W-2s should be mailed by January 31st.
• Budget for next year - Create your general ledger budget for 2018.

As part of the year-end process, a new benefit year will need to be opened to roll over any PTO or vacation time into the next year and to start accruals for the new benefit year. 

Initialization Utilities in Deltek Vision and Deltek for Professional Services

There are numerous initialization utilities that need to be performed in Deltek Vision and DPS. Take note that these utilities need to be completed once per fiscal year. Vision and DPS will generate a posting log for the initialization utilities which is available in the transaction center under the posting review report. If your Vision or DPS database is set up with multi-company functionality, the initialization utilities need to run in each company. Make sure to watch this video for more information.

In Vision and DPS, opening the 1st period of your fiscal year also opens the new fiscal year. Depending on your security rights, you can still process in the prior fiscal year if needed.

Is Your Firm Ready for 2018?

Efficiently complete the tasks required for 2017 year-end, and you will be ready. If your firm is having any difficulties performing year-end tasks in Deltek Vision or DPS, Full Sail Partners can be of assistance! Also, remember to check out the new Deltek Customer Care portal for numerous resources available to you.

  

At a recent client meeting, it was brought to light how many of my clients don’t use Deltek Vision’s approval engine capabilities. I thought how crazy that notion was because using the approval engine can save clients so much paper and time. Let me share with you what this firm experienced in dealing with approvals, and let’s see how many of you can think outside the box and see the benefits of Deltek Vision’s approval engine.

Packed with Paper 

Here’s where the story begins. A little time back, I was with a client when a principal walked in with a banker’s box full of papers. He was preparing to leave for vacation and had carefully assembled all the paperwork he needed to take care of while he was away. I asked what was in the box, and he explained that he had to approve the consultant invoices and then review the client invoices. He had packed all the project folders and everything was ready so he could speed through them on vacation and bring them back to accounting when he returned. 

In my mind, I was screaming for several reasons. First, who wants to work on your vacation? Next, so many things could happen to those papers like losing some on the plane or spilling wine when reviewing them. Not to mention, accounting is put on hold until he returns, the consultant’s invoices can’t get entered until billing is processed and how will he really know when he is done. By the way, how does he even keep track of action items using his box and paper system? 

Let’s Think Out of the Box 

Not wanting to overwhelm this principal just hours before he was set to go, I calmed the voices in my head and simply said, “You know, one day I am going to take your box away from you and you won’t miss it.” With a perplexed look, he asked me how. I explained that we could process the consultant invoices electronically. Accounting could scan the invoices, and after being scanned into the system, various parties would then do their part to approve or reject the invoice in Deltek Vision based on the business rules. 

The entire process could be done in the Deltek Vision system, and the status and notes would be visible to everyone along the way. As soon as there was final approval, accounting could continue processing the invoice and post it in Vision. The copy would be attached to the next Invoice and no box would be required. 

Coming into the Light 

Despite my description of the approval engine process, the principal remained unconvinced. He instantly presented a list of objections which I confidently addressed one by one: 

“I need to see project details as I am reviewing.” “No problem, use the project review tool in the approval application.” 

“Sometimes I want the project manager to look at it before I approve it.” “The system is designed so you can delegate or reassign approvals.” 

“There are also times that I need accounting to send the invoice back to the consultant.” “That’s why when you reject it, you must notate why in the dialog box. The system sends the message to accounting for you.” 

“We must have paper copies for taxes and legal things.” “Maybe, but IRS has been accepting electronic copies since 1995.” 

After my most excellent retorts to his arguments, the principal finally realized that using Deltek Vision’s approval engine capabilities was a viable option. I further explained that with his current Vision system, he can use electronic approvals to handle vacation requests, departmental budgets, expense reports and more. Before, he just hadn’t seen the value of thinking outside of his box. Now his box could instead be used for vacation souvenirs. 

Use Deltek Vision’s Approval Engine 

This is a true story, but not at all unique. In the past, there was not a fully integrated system. Many firms had given up on going paperless, and the final handshake always required touching that piece of paper one last time. However, with Deltek Vision’s approval engine, firms can now truly eliminate the need to physically transport documents in their boxes. Rather, thinking outside of their boxes, they can reduce processing times and provide unprecedented visibility into status and condition of their invoices.

 

One of the main responsibilities of a project manager is managing the profitability of his projects. It is easy to look at hours charged to a project at billing rates minus the value of those hours at cost to see the gross profit of a project, but gross profit doesn’t give a true picture of profitability. Most firms prefer to look at net profit to measure the financial success of projects with net profit being hours at billing rates minus cost plus overhead.

Luckily, Deltek Vision has a utility to accomplish just that – calculating net profitability on projects.

Overhead at a Glance

What is overhead? Overhead is an accounting term that refers to ongoing general business expenses, not including direct labor or expenses that are reimbursed to firms by clients. For example, business expenses like rent, health insurance and indirect labor are types of overhead expenses.

Overhead allocation must be configured in Vision and the utility must be run on a timely basis – usually at month end. Overhead allocation can give a true understanding of a project’s profitability.

Preparing Deltek Vision for Overhead Allocation

There are several decisions that need to be made during the configuration phase of setting up overhead allocation in Deltek Vision depending on the current configuration. First, the allocation scope needs to be determined. If the firm uses profit centers, additional configuration decisions will have to be considered. For example, if the firm has a “corporate” profit center, overhead may need to be distributed from the corporate profit center to the revenue producing profit centers.

Next, Vision offers two choices for the basis of applying overhead to projects - direct labor or the proration method. The direct labor method applies a multiplier that is used to determine every dollar of direct labor spent on a project. Vision uses the total overhead expense divided by total direct labor to determine the multiplier used when overhead allocation is run.

The multiplier method remains consistent if the same multiplier is in effect. Firms generally prefer the multiplier method because of its consistency. Additionally, project managers always know how much overhead is being applied to their projects. On the other hand, the proration method uses the firm’s actual, year-to-date indirect expenses. Since this method is based on actual indirect expenses, it will change month to month.

The Benefit of Using Overhead Allocation in Deltek Vision

Once overhead allocation has been run, there are several reports, including the project progress, office earnings and project summary, that when run at cost, will display overhead. Running the overhead allocation process will return a report detailing the amount of overhead applied to projects and the actual overhead rate of the firm. Not only does overhead allocation provide a clear understanding of the profitability of the firm’s projects, it also gives an indication of the firm’s overhead costs and the tools needed to increase profits.

Revenue Method B is the most widely used revenue method in Deltek Vision. In fairness, this is Vision’s default method for projects whose charge type is Regular. As a result, most firms use it since it’s easy to deploy and seems to work, or so we think.

How Revenue Method B Works

Revenue Method B works well when we have a time & materials project that is billed frequently. In this scenario, we have a perfect match between revenue and costs and can easily measure project performance. On the other hand, when billings and costs don’t align, measuring interim project performance becomes more challenging. Milestone billings or fixed fee projects are billed on cycles that don’t always coincide with a proper revenue accrual or as the associated costs are incurred on the project. Keep in mind that we are not matching revenues and expenses, and this can lead to unreliable financial results during the project life cycle.

For example, a project has a contract provision that calls for $10,000 to be billed at the end of month two. We complete the work in month one at a cost of $3,000 (10,000 billing rate). The financial reconciliation for this project is:

In month one, the project has no income (no billings) and incurs costs of $3,000. With Revenue Method B, the project incurs a $3,000 gross margin loss.

In month two, when the project is billed, we have the reverse situation; $10,000 Revenue and no cost, which results in a $10,000 Gross Margin profit.

So…did we make money or not?

The Results of Using Revenue Method B

From month to month, it is very difficult to assess the true profitability of the project. Therefore, we must wait until a point where billings and costs align or the project is closed. In this simple example, we can look at the end of month 2 and determine our performance. However, what if this project spans over a year or more? With Revenue Method B, we may never have a point where revenue and costs align to make an informed decision on profitability.

To accurately measure performance, a proper matching of revenue and costs is mandatory. Revenue must be earned as work is completed or as the associated costs are incurred. This is the best accounting practice, and with the impending requirement of FASB 606, will now be part of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

Clearly, Revenue Method B will not work well when the earnings process does not align with the billing process. For those of us using this method, we are reporting inaccurate results to our stakeholders or making manual adjustments to accommodate for Revenue Method B’s shortcomings. Fortunately, Deltek Vision offers alternatives that will help us properly record revenue and comply with FASB 606.

FASB 606 Implications

In May 2014, FASB 606 was released and will be required by December 2018. FASB 606 will render Revenue Method B obsolete for most projects.

FASB 606 has five elements:

• Identify the contract with the client
• Identify the performance obligations in the contract
• Determine the transaction price
• Allocate the transaction price to each performance obligation
• Recognize Revenue as we satisfy the performance obligations

FASB 606 does not reference billings unless billings specifically follow the earnings process described above. Therefore, to be in compliance with this new requirement, we must abandon Revenue Method B for most of our projects.

Revenue Method B Alternatives in Deltek Vision

Stay tuned for the next chapter…User Defined Revenue Methods. We will look at how we can use Deltek Vision to create Revenue Methods that will comply with FASB 606. In the meantime, click here to learn more about FASB 606. 

A KPI, or Key Performance Indicator, is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving crucial business objectives. Organizations should use KPIs to evaluate their success at reaching targeted goals. Simply stated, KPIs provide your firm with metrics that compare budgeted amounts to the actual values. KPIs are no longer just for accounting and finance as they now reach deeper into a firm’s operational side examining marketing, business development and project management.

KPIs vs Traditional Reporting Methods 

Let’s take a look at how firms benefit from KPIs and how KPIs differ from standard reporting. A common reporting technique is to compare current profit & loss results to the same period the previous year, or to compare year to date then versus year to date for the current year. Budget data for one or both comparisons can be incorporated. Now, what if we graphed this information and included a desired growth line? We will then have a visual of actual performance in relation to a chosen measurement. This measurement will inherently become an indication of whether we are achieving our goals, and would allow us to be proactive in correcting potential challenges. 

Using KPIs to Measure Success 

As mentioned earlier, KPIs are not just a tool for the finance team. For example, a chief operating officer may not relate well to traditional financial statements and focusing on project related metrics would be more to his liking. These indicators can be project specific, relate to a grouping of projects, or be sliced and diced based on the organizational breakdown structure (OBS) or work breakdown structure (WBS). Click here to learn more about OBS and WBS.

In another scenario, a chief strategy officer believes there is a benefit from evaluating trending data regarding hit rates filtered by a predetermined criterion. However, we must keep in mind that unless a benchmark or some other distinguished metric is established, this may not result in a clear and meaningful measurement. 

Here are two examples of KPIs that have proven to be successful: 

1. Cost and Schedule Variance – Using Deltek Vision reporting, actual project cost performance index (CPI) and schedule performance index (SPI) is calculated and compared to an acceptable mean-variance.
2. Estimate at Completion (EAC) Analysis – This can be as simple as a two-column report showing EAC in comparison to the contract value. The criteria can also be set by contract type to “flag” anomalies that need to be further investigated. 

The Bottom-line on KPIs 

KPIs can be used company wide. C-level executives can look across client and project types and evaluate revenue multipliers or collections success. These same evaluations can be done at all levels across your enterprise from managers that are accountable for sections of your organization down to individual project managers driving the lowest levels of WBS. What is required is a benchmark, a budget or a goal. Whether top down or bottom up, the view into why businesses perform the way they do will kept top of mind.

So, how does your firm measure success across the enterprise? Is it profit centers, projects, employees or pursuits? Every firm is unique and can’t just use “off the shelf” KPIs. It all begins with a discussion of what you need to drive your firm to the finish line. Once decided, designing the reports and data is easy.

 

Spend Management is a popular term, but what is it really? Spend Management can encompass anything from procurement, supply chain management, expense control, outsourcing and more. For most businesses, managing spending may not seem to provide a competitive advantage nor differentiate them from the competition. While this task doesn’t directly drive revenue, figuring out how to better manage and control your travel costs, expenses and invoicing does provide significant business value.

So, what exactly does a good Spend Management strategy need to accomplish? It should:

• Simplify accounts payable (AP) workflows
• Enhance the end user experience
• Encourage mobility in the AP process
• Improve compliance levels
• Provide increased insight into spending
• Allow for visibility of expenses before they are incurred

What Can All This Do for Your Firm?

Spend Management will lower your capital expense profile, increase employee productivity, lower costs for managing operational functions and drive new capabilities that have a direct impact on business performance. Accomplishing these goals allows your firm to continue to compete in this hypercompetitive environment that continually rewards sustained agility.

Organizations typically start with a manual process for managing purchasing, expense reports, and invoice management. As the company grows in size and complexity, workarounds like spreadsheets and physical reconciliation are simply no longer efficient and directly impact the further ability to grow and manage spending.

According to an IDC study (Document #US42246116 © 2017 IDC), implementing effective strategies can result in:

• 68% less time processing invoices
• Improving company procurement compliance by up to 14%
• Increasing productivity by an average of 11% using mobile/OCR management tools
• Reducing IT staff time to manage spend by 29%

How to Evaluate Solutions to Help Your Firm with Spend Management?

There are many factors to consider when evaluating a Spend Management solution. Here are some key things to contemplate:

• Business ready: Solutions must be able to scale to accommodate your firm now and in the future, and must automatically link into existing accounting and ERP systems. These are secure, cloud-based solutions that fit within the CIO’s IT policy framework, are cost-effective and easy to deploy across the organization.
• Business Intelligence: These solutions must be capable of providing greater business performance visibility and driving smarter decision-making. With a solution that offers more than automation, executives are armed with the insights to identify business opportunities that never existed before. What used to take days or weeks can now take hours.
• Complete visibility: Encompassing all areas of spend in one solution, including travel costs, expenses and invoice management, is ideal. If you only see a piece of the puzzle, it is virtually impossible to view the entire picture. With solutions that can integrate all of the data and incorporate your firm’s spend management regulations, you can ensure there is maximum compliance and have the easiest adoption across the company with only one solution to learn.
• End-user adoptability: As better financial performance rests with reducing accounts receivable turnover and achieving greater efficiency in cash flow management, businesses need to ensure that finance and accounting staff, as well as their employees, are able to quickly and accurately execute a modern, mobile process. When end users are satisfied and are able to employ solutions anywhere and anytime, this results in faster and increased adoption of the solutions and increased financial performance.

The best systems provide better visibility and insight into non-PO spend, P-card spend, and corporate card spend as well as meet employees where they are. They allow for visibility into spend before the money has been spent (PO management) and follow through to auditing with full details completely integrated into your firm’s ERP system. They also can incorporate all of these areas of spend into one solution so it’s easy to quantify spend across all areas.

Gain Control of Your Spend Management

Expectations and demands for employees, especially finance staff, have never been higher. The cost of lower productivity, employee turnover, and inefficient financial operations is now even more critical to a firm’s success and must be addressed. Employees require mobile, efficient solutions to increase their overall satisfaction and productivity. With increased industry compliance regulations, accurate reporting is now a necessity instead of a luxury. Now is the time to get control with a Spend Management solution.

 

It is a mystery why we deal with time management so badly. This is our commodity which we sell to our clients. However, we treat it like a curse, as if it’s an evil process that accounting forces on us. It somehow escapes us that this is the lifeblood of our business, and without it, we are out of business. So why don’t we manage this better and how can we improve our firm’s practices? 

Well, to begin with, the timesheet function in Deltek Vision is incredibly easy to use. You just need to know what features to focus on. Let’s take a look at timesheets and what is offered in Deltek Vision regarding time management.

Timesheet Best Practices

Project management best practices always include sound timesheet management processes. First of all, timesheets should be entered daily and submitted timely. Secondly, project manager review is mandatory. Timesheets should be corrected before they are posted to our projects and the billing system in Deltek Vision.

Poor timesheet management inherently leads to inefficient processes later. Timesheet miscodes cause incorrect project reporting and erroneous invoices. Additionally, transferring time entries in the billing system is time consuming. This slows down billing, involves the project manager, employee and accounting. Worst of all, this directly affects cash flow because of the delay in processing client invoices.

Features of Timesheets in Deltek Vision

We need sound, efficient and thorough timesheet management policies and procedures. They need to be incorporated into our culture. Along with daily entry and strict deadlines for timesheet submission, Deltek Vision has a number of tools to assist project managers with this process:

Floor Check was introduced in Version 7.2 and is a powerful tool that lets timesheet administrators see if employees are doing their timesheets. It shows the employee’s expected hours and the actual hours entered. Additionally, floor check has email functionality, so you can email employees directly and tell them, “DO YOUR TIMESHEET,” or you can also create pre-defined messages.

Unposted Labor Report is a standard project report that only shows unposted time sheets. This is the ideal tool for project managers to use in order to see what has been charged to their projects before they are posted. This is the perfect opportunity to fix timesheets before they are charged to our projects.

Project Reports with Unposted Time reports can be included in project reports by using the unposted time option. As a result, project managers can see labor being charged to their projects during the timesheet period.

Line Item Approval allows project managers to use line item approvals to put their final approval on time charged to their projects once timesheets are submitted. Line item approvals link to project ownership, so project managers will only see their projects.

Timesheet Audit Trail tracks changes to timesheets after they have been saved or submitted. You can require the employee enter a comment, or just track changes without explanation. Audit trails can also track billing transfers. This is the “where did it go” and “where did it come from” report. A timesheet audit trail report is available in employee reporting.

Get Your Timesheets Done!

With all of these tools within Deltek Vision at your disposal, timesheet management is within your grasp. You can simply start with daily timesheet reminders. Eventually, you will develop a plan that makes timesheet management best practices part of your firm’s culture. 

 

Does your firm work internationally and deal with multiple currencies? Did you know there is a way to automate the tracking and conversion data? Within Deltek Vision is the Multicurrency function which holds the key to simplifying this process for your firm.

Vision Multicurrency allows you to:

• Manage multiple currencies for transactions, accounting and financial reporting
• Enter and manage exchange rates which can be done manually or can be automated to pull in exchange rates (XE.com has an auto feed subscription for this)
• Support daily and periodic exchange rate changes
• Revalue foreign currency accounts and automatically identify a gain or loss due to currency fluctuations

Considerations when Using Deltek Vision Multicurrency

With any changes to your standard accounting practices, there are always some items that need to be taken into consideration:

Revenue Considerations: Revenue generation will now use the billing currency fields in the project info center.

Project Considerations: Once you set a project to a currency and the project has data on it, the currency code cannot be changed on the project. It is very important to set the project to the correct currency upon initial setup. All lower levels of the work breakdown structure (WBS) must also be set to the same currency as the project. Optionally, a billing currency can be set differently than the project currency, but all lower levels will need to match.

General Ledger Account Considerations: In Vision Multicurrency accounts can be left without a specific currency or set to a single currency. In some situations, the company might set a bank account to a specific functional currency. For example, a bank account is set to USD for use by only the USD company. You might leave other accounts open to be used across companies with different currencies. Once an account is set to a currency that is different than the functional currency, it is then considered a foreign denominated account.

Unit Considerations: You must specify both a project and billing currency.

Vendor Considerations: Vendor records are stored in the functional currency of the active company. Additionally, there are several details to note for vendor records:

• Functional Currency – the home currency or the currency in which the company operates
• Transactional Currency – the currency in which a transaction is entered into Vision
• Presentation Currency - used in reporting to generate a report with all amounts expressed in a single currency
• Billing Currency - the currency used to generate invoices and billing reports for specific projects and their WBS
• Project Currency – the currency in which the project is managed which can be different than the functional currency when needed (this currency should be used for all project management purposes including reporting)
• Payment Currency – the currency in which the payments are made
• Consolidated Reporting Currency – only available in a Multicompany environment and is used to create consolidated financial statements for multiple companies that are using different functional currencies
• Account Currencies – each account setup for use as a bank account and mapped to a GL code can be set to a specific currency directly through the account setup of the GL (if you specify an account currency that is different from the company’s functional currency, the account is then considered a foreign-denominated account)
• Tax Currency – if tax auditing is enabled then a currency must be set for each tax code (this is generally the currency in which you report and pay the tax amounts to the proper tax authority)

Generally Accepted Accounting Practices in Deltek Vision Multicurrency

Deltek Vision Multicurrency is in accordance with the Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) sections ASC-830-10-55-10 and 11. In section 55-10, the guideline states that it is acceptable to use averages or other methods of approximation. Accordingly, it is recommended to use a weighted average of the exchange rate for a period rather than applying actual day-to-day fluctuations.

Furthermore, section 55-11 states that average rates used shall be appropriately weighted by the volume of functional currency transactions occurring during an accounting period. In other words, to translate revenue and expense accounts for an annual period, individual revenue and expense accounts for each quarter or month may be translated at that quarter's or that month's average rate. The translated amounts for each quarter or month should then be combined for the annual totals.

Why Use Multicurrency in Deltek Vision?

Multicurrency can be used for tracking currency exchange gains and losses. Having foreign-denominated accounts creates the need to track gains and losses based on fluctuating exchange rates. For example, if a European company has a bank account denominated in United States dollars and the value of the euro rises against the United States dollar, the value in euros of that bank account balance drops. This results in an unrealized loss to the European company. Using Multicurrency allows you to use the Gains/Losses and Revaluations process in Vision to calculate and post these types of currency exchange gains and losses. As a result, they appear on your financial statements per the generally accepted accounting practices under which you operate.

 

In a previous blog, we reviewed multi-company functionality in Deltek Vision and learned how it serves as a tool for sharing and accounting for resources across the companies within an enterprise. Cross charge capabilities in Vision are based on similar theories as multi-company, but are focused on the interaction within a company and its organizational breakdown structure (OBS). Before we dive deeper, here are some links to blogs about multi-company functionality and OBS in case you are unfamiliar with these topics.

High Level Insight into Cross Charge in Deltek Vision 

It is important to understand that cross charging is a financial tool and is based on the general ledger. It is not an attribute of project reporting since time charged to a project remains on the project for billing and reporting purposes. Cross charge is labor focused and occurs after the timesheet is posted. 

By default, Vision is built to be project centric, which simply means that the process of entering and posting timesheets determines where the labor charges are assigned. If the cross charge process is not configured or run, the cost will remain on the “books” of the organization where the project is assigned. 

Why Use Cross Charge? 

As financial and operational managers, we must always remember that revenue can only be earned once and a cost incurred once. For this reason, cross charge allows businesses to move these elements in and out of various “buckets” within their organization. When a combined income statement is run, all cross charge entries will zero out and the original revenue and cost will remain. 

The cross charge process is used when firms loan and borrow labor at the lowest OBS level, which could be: 

• Office
• Department
• Discipline
• Market Sector 

A good example is a civil engineer where projects live in the various disciplines. The survey department would loan their staff to the engineering projects and cross charge would be the financial component to drive and manage the accounting for the labor. 

There are two internal pricing options to choose from when configuring cross charge: 

1. Project Centric – This is when labor remains on the books of the organization where the project resides. A multiplier is then used to account for some portion of operational/overhead (OH) costs. This factor could be limited to a fringe benefit rate, could represent a breakeven OH rate or even include some profit. The purpose is to ensure that the loaning organization has an incentive to keep their staff busy, but they also need to be careful as to not over extend their resources. 

2. Employee Centric – This works by adjusting labor back to the employee’s organization. Using typical billing rates, although a multiplier can be used, the revenue is moved from the projects to the employee’s organization. The purpose again is to ensure the loaning organization doesn’t lose the ability to show a profit by sharing their staff. 

Real-life Application of Cross Charge in Deltek Vision 

Here is a success story where the operational process and projects are built on the premise that fee and scope drives work breakdown structure (WBS) in a clients’ Deltek Vision database. Under this model, high accountability becomes the first option where phases and tasks within a project are assigned to different organizations based on the portion of the work. Employees then charge the phase/task that is assigned to the organization they “live” in. This results in more closely managed projects because the profit accountability is shifted back to the organization supplying the labor. This process eliminates the need for cross charge. 

But wait…realizing that in order to run successful projects, there is a necessity to anticipate unplanned needs. This means that the firm must have the ability to borrow an employee from another department for a short-term assignment or a last minute need. For example, the base building studio decides it needs input from the interiors studio. In this scenario, the client falls back on the project centric method noted above as a mechanism to facilitate resource sharing and not impede project progress. Furthermore, this is a prime example of a need for cross charge. 

Gain Control of Resources with Cross Charge 

Whether your current OBS is solid or you are considering a change, cross charge can provide the functionality required to ensure an open and smooth process of resource sharing. With a thorough understanding and effective implementation, cross charge can provide another dimension in managing your business.