SAP Business One for Project Planning

The combination of SAP Business One and IA Project has been developed for companies that manage some or most of their business as projects.

IA Project has been specifically designed to meet the demanding requirements of project driven companies. While, SAP Business One for Project industries is perfect for companies where only part of their business is project based. Companies with a combination of trade, service and projects require a broad base of functionality in an integrated and easy to use system.

Project Planning

Integrated Gantt charts provide a real time view of capacity and material requirements. Material deliveries are linked with project activities and are directly visible in the project plan.

Capacity Planning

Graphical-based capacity planning. Using drag & drop, activities and hours in the project plan can be allocated directly to resources (employees and machines).

Quotation Controls & Sales

Improve the process of quoting and managing projects in your sales process. Ensure an accurate available-to-promise by adding a quote to a project plan to see the impact on machines and labour.

Job Costing

Direct access to projected margin, planned-v-actual budgets and WIP. The extensive drill-down options to activities, material and labour, mean you will always have a real-time view of the status of the project, progress and work in progress.

Time registration

Book direct and indirect hours in time sheets with real-time roll-up to project costing andGantt chart. Data can be input via a computer or mobile devices.

Procurement & Inventory

With comprehensive material planning and procurement, materials can be linked to project activities or milestones and provide just-in-time purchasing. Project-based procurement and multiple warehouses are also supported.

Accounting & Invoicing

Extensive invoice schemes are supported, including down payments and progress billing. Invoices can be linked to milestones, activities or scheduled to a date.

Financial Administration

Integrated financial administration that is fed from all other relevant components of the software solution. Combined with flexible and extensive financial reporting.

CRM

Robust and easy to use CRM functionality providing opportunity management and a central database for sales, marketing and service. A single customer database fully integrated with quotes, orders and all other relevant data.

“I now have the data I need to do my job. You can’t put a price tag on the value of timely, accurate information. SAP Business One and Variatec Project have delivered a lot of benefits, but that is the biggest of them all. We examined every process and redesigned it to take optimal advantage of SAP Business One for Project Industries. It was a lot of work but it was worth it! Our profitability has almost doubled!” Sean Rayner, President – Vets Sheet Metal Ltd

Step 1 Define & Plan the project

Create new projects from scratch, or copy from templates or other projects. Copy previous hours, materials, planning constraints, billing-scheme and attachments. Easily adjust hours, materials and prices to quickly create an overall project budget. With one click you can view and plan your new project with a real-time interactive Gantt chart. This will display all constraints and dependencies, combined with material requirements, labour, milestones, invoicing and delivery dates. Overlay your project plan with your departmental capacity to ensure resources are available for a reliable “available-to-promise”.

Step 2 Price Your Project

After developing a project budget you can quickly price and quote your project by using the extensive and flexible price lists within SAP Business One. Or simply add an up-lift margin to material and labour costs, or to the overall project cost. Using this estimate you can automatically generate a quote and create a sales order.

Step 3 Work assignment

After developing a project budget you can quickly price and quote your project by using the extensive and flexible price lists within SAP Business One. Or simply add an up-lift margin to material and labour costs, or to the overall project cost. Using this estimate you can automatically generate a quote and create a sales order.

Step 4 Material Management

Plan your material requirements on a project basis. Any project can include individual material components and pre-defined BOMs, all combined to create a project BOM which also can be adjusted. Material can be assigned to specific project activities to enable just-in-time planning and purchasing. Create material recommendations for a single project or combine multiple projects. All material requirements, PO’s and production orders are visible in the interactive Gantt chart.

Step 5 Time registration

Record and book time by project, activity and work type. Remote users can even input their time via a web browser. Time can be approved and booked to a project where it will immediately show up as “actual” hours in the project budget and thereby enable real-time insight into budget-vs-actual. Actual booked hours are also immediately displayed in the project Gantt chart.

Step 6 Project Invoicing & Financial Control

Establish a billing method for the project with down payments, percentage of completion, milestone, or time & materials. Invoices can be tied to the completion of a project activity, a milestone or on a specific date. This ensures your invoices are generated promptly to maximize your on-time collections. Every project has a screen to show Budget v Actual and Work-in-Process to keep track of any financial changes to a project. For each activity and phase you have complete insight into planned and actual costs, project margin, work in progress and budget to go. You will always have up-to-date control over the financial health of your projects and your project margin!

Benefits of SAP Business One Project Costing include:

• Fast estimating – Create new projects from templates or by copying prior projects.
• Quick Pricing – Quickly develop a cost budget and selling price.
• Accurate budget v actual
• Accurate estimating – Labour and material costs are accurately and quickly reflected in every project.
• Gantt chart integration – Plan your new project with a real-time interactive Gantt chart showing all constraints and dependencies, combined with material requirements, labour, milestones, invoicing and delivery dates.
• Capacity planning – Customise your departments, labour and machines to display your real-time capacity. Overlay your project plan with your department capacity to ensure you have resources available.
• Accurate available-to-promise – Project planning integrated with capacity planning so available-to-promise can be quickly and reliably determined.
• Just-in-time material planning – Schedule material requirements to specific activities and phases of the project plan. Purchase and production can be ordered just in time.
• Reliable deliveries – Effective project planning fully integrated with material planning and capacity ensures that projects are completed and delivered on time.
• Increasing project margins – Accurate estimating, real-time visibility into costs, combined with integrated project & capacity planning ensures that project margins remain healthy and variances can be quickly identified.
• Milestone billing – Schedule invoicing to coincide with the completion of a project phase or activity. Down payments, time & materials, or percentage of completion invoicing. Web-based labour reporting Labour hours can be recording by project activity, and input by local computer or by a web browser for remote users.
• Improving quality – Creating projects from templates reinforces best practices. Copy prior projects for continuous improvement. Accurate project & capacity planning ensures projects are well managed, on-time and profitable.
• Less risk & less stress – Your projects will be better managed, which leads to less stress and a more organized work environment.