Oracle Project Accounting an Overview

Question: What type of industry use project accounting module?

Answer: An industry, where there are number activities that need to be done to complete a product or concept and that takes considerable period of time to complete, will use project accounting to track the costs, revenues and manage the activities effectively. Example Software product development; construction of a building; research and development; building a wind turbine for customers etc..

Question: How will Oracle Projects help for such kind of industry?

Answer: Each activity can be set as a project is oracle project accounting module. Budgeting can be done for the cost and revenue for each project. Project costing helps us to accumulate all the costs on the project while project billing module helps us in creating and monitoring the revenue and initiating the billing for the project.

Question: So looks like Oracle Projects have different sub-modules?

Answer: Yes Oracle Projects have different sub-modules to help us in the project activities:

Project Foundation: All basic configuration for projects are done in Project Foundation. Eg: project creation; task creation; project type creation and another tons of setups are done here.

Project Costing: This module deals with everything related to accumulating the cost to the project. If we need to view the total cost of a project, this is the place to look for.  Project costing also is integrated with other modules like Oracle Purchasing; Oracle Payables; Oracle Assets etc, which generates costs in the system. If we need to know the exact cost of a project, the data should flow from all the places where the expenses gets incurred into project costing module. In actual implementations I have done integrations with some 15 systems where the costs originated outside oracle to bring the expenses into project costing module.
Bottom line is that wherever the expenditure is incurred for a project, it should be imported into project costing to know the correct project costs.

Project Billing: This module deals with everything related to generation of revenue and initiating billing on the customers. The module is capable of handling different methods for revenue and billing. For example, there could be milestone billing based on a deliverable or happening of an event. Other words called 'event based billing'. Billing can also sometimes be based on time and material ie..based on the hours put in my the resources on a job. This in other words called 'work based billing'. There is also method where billing is based on percentage on the actual cost incurred. Similar methods can also be used for generation of revenue in the project billing module.

Project Management: This is a very useful module for project manager. Here the project manager can control the project using any of the following functionalities:

• create a project plan and track the progress of the work for the project
• track the deliverables in a project and effectively manage the scope change
• compare the forecast with the actuals for cost and revenue
• calculate earned value; estimate to completion and estimate at completion for a project
• the module provides dashboards with various useful reports and graphs that will help the project manager to effectively manage a project.

Project Contracts: This module is very handy when there is a requirement to capture various documents including the terms and conditions on a project. We can create the Contract for each project or combination of projects in this module. The contract can store all the contract information in an organized manner with ability to also capture the following information:

• Parties involved in a contract
• the method of funding for the project
• the contact details
• the terms like revenue recognition term; payment term; contract value; additional information through flexible fields.
• Contract version control etc.

Project Manufacturing: This module need to be enabled for us to be able to assign project and task in the inventory or manufacturing modules. For example if we are issuing materials to production for a specific project, we will be able to assign a project number and task number on the material issue only when we enable the project manufacturing module.

Project Resource Management: This module helps for optimal utilization of human resources. It helps the project manager / resource manager to effectively utilize and manage the resources that are deployed for the project. This module is closely integrated with human resource module.

Project Collaboration: Project Collaboration is a module used for effective communication among the project team members. Tasks, issues or deliverables can be raised / assigned to the team members  along with the priorities and due dates. These can be tracked to closure through this module.

Project Portfolio Analysis:  Oracle Project Portfolio Analysis helps organizations evaluate, analyze, prioritize, and select the right set of projects supported by financial goals, strategic goals, and available funds. Available in the latest release of Oracle Enterprise Project Management, Oracle Project Portfolio Analysis helps organizations evaluate, analyze, prioritize, and select the right set of projects supported by financial goals, strategic goals, and available funds