Sage 2012 - Project Function

[tommyd]

Hello,

We currently run Sage Line 50 2009, and at the moment our financial year runs from June to May. However, due to a change in our financial structure we are going to adopt a yearly reporting period of January to December.

This change, gives us the opportunity to create a fresh system using Line 50 2012, using the framework of our existing 2009 system, but with many of the now defunct customers, suppliers, nominal codes removed. This should help simplify and remove the clutter for a fresh start.

One of the avenues that I would like to explore is the use of the Sage 'Projects' function which we haven't utilised at all. From what I can see creating 'jobs or campaigns' that the company is carrying out and then assigning the various purchase and sales invoices to them seems exactly what we need. However, the problem lies with how we post our wages onto the system.

At the moment we run weekly payrolls as we have hundreds of staff out in the 'field' working on a number of different campaigns at any one time. In terms of posting these wages, we would put through a journal that debits the P&L with the total of each campaign's wages, and credit the various balance sheet accounts that make up the components of this payroll (Net Pay, PAYE, NI etc) - but with there doesn't seem to be a way to allocate journal entries to projects. The reason being is that come month end, it would be alot simpler to simply print off a report of each campaign we are carrying out in the month and show the total revenues and costs - instead of having to drill down into each nominal code, filter out and sort the various campaigns manually.

Being that these wages are the primary cost of the campaigns we run is there any way to somehow allocate these journal entries to specific 'projects' or perhaps change our procedures so the wages are posted differently but so they are included in the various projects?

Thanks,

Tom

[brucedenney]

I would not start "afresh" that is just a lot of work for nothing.

Old accounts can be removed, history can be purged, archives can be made and you can move forward from the current position.


The import tool allows you to import project only transactions however, these are not controlled, they are just costs against the project.

You could look at importing the costs in a more controlled way, the sage 50 custom import tool we use does have the project field exposed, so it should be possible to write a tool to import a journal that includes project information. I have never actually tried this with a journal, only on invoices and credit notes, but it seem possible, I could do a test when I get some time if this is of interest.

[tommyd]

Hey Bruce,

Thanks for replying and clearly a few things up. I feel I may have over exaggerated the severity of 'starting afresh', as after speaking to Sage the process seemed fairly painless. I simply too a backup of our 2009 data (everything), then imported it into 2012 on another machine where I am building the new company, and rebuilt the data - purging the history but keeping the structure. So far, the process has been very simple and not very time consuming - though if you can advise on other avenues to explore I remain open minded.

In regards to the project tool; this is something I would maybe like to explore as I'm really looking at ways to automate our accounting processes and help speed up the month end analysis process. Theoretically, if you could place P&L journal entries against specific projects you have set up, would this would mean you could also do the same for when you put through accruals or release prepayments...?

Tom

[brucedenney]

If I can post journals to projects then, as long as the journal is generated externally it can be against projects.
The input for the tool would be a csv file, in your case I had imagined that the payroll could generate a csv with the appropriate project breakdown information in it.

If you want to use the automatic journals in Sage eg Prepayments and Accruals or depreciation then they would not have any project information on them.

For automated month end journals, I would keep a spreadsheet with the journals in it and save it as a csv file to import into Sage.