Costing Budgets
Budgets for Projects are entered as Transactions with Estimate status.
Estimate Transactions entered to Projects with Estimate status make up the ‘original’ Budget.
Estimates Transactions entered to Projects with Active status are treated as ‘revised’ Budget.
Estimates
Project Estimates are made up from Transactions that are entered with Estimate status.
If they are entered to a Project that has Estimate status, they are treated as parts of the original Estimate.
If they are entered to a Project that has Active status, they are treated as revisions to the original Estimate.
If an Estimate Project has been changed to Active, and then changed back to Estimate, the Revised Budget is incremented with the amount of additional estimate transactions. The Original Budget is locked once an Active transaction is posted.
Example:
1. Create a new Estimate Project and Cost Centre. Add a new Estimate Timesheet transaction with a value of £50. On the Project, check the Difference window and notice the Original Budget shows £50.
2. Change the Project to Active and enter an Active Timesheet transaction for £25. On the project, check the Difference window and notice the Original Budget shows £50, with Committed Actual of £25.
3. Change the Project back to Estimate and enter an Estimate Timesheet transaction of £75. On the project, check the Difference window and notice the Original Budget is £50, and there is now a Revised Budget of £75.
Original Estimates (Budgets)
The Project Estimate (Budget), can be entered at any time, though usually it is set up while the Project still has Estimate Status.
To change the status of a Project:
Select Project.
Find or Browse to the Project whose status you want to change.
Click on Edit.
Pull down the Status menu button.
Select Estimate, and the menu button will change to show this status.
Remember that if you are temporarily changing the Project's status in order to add Estimate Transactions to the Project Budget, you must reset the Project status as soon as you have finished. Until you do this you are unable to enter live Transactions.
Having ensured that the Project has Estimate status, you can now enter your Transactions as Miscellaneous or Timesheets.
In both cases, on the Transaction Header make sure that you select Estimate status for these Transactions.
Revised Estimates (Budgets)
Revised estimates can be applied to Projects with an Active status. This can be achieved by posting Estimate Costing transactions (Timesheet, Miscellaneous & Sales-types), against a Project with an Active status.
Note: You need to manually enter an ‘Active’ Project code – this cannot be selected from the record list, because if the transaction has an ‘Estimate’ status, the lookup list will only show ‘Estimate’ Projects.
On each detail line, where an Active Project is selected, there will be a prompt to inform that the Revised Budget will be updated.
When an additional estimate is posted to an Active Project, the Original Budget will be copied into the Revision and the new estimate values will be added.
This creates a new budget for comparison against ‘Actual’ values.
Once a Revised Budget has been created, the Original Budget is ‘locked’.
Printing Estimates
The Estimate is saved in the Estimate/Quote Batch list in the Transactions menu, from which it can be printed.
Note that SOP allows you to convert Estimates to Invoices. This is not recommended because it is more likely that you will Invoice from within Costing.