Easily Manage Your Projects with NetSuite SRP

These are exciting times in the world of Project Management! Using NetSuite SRP, we can efficiently create projects, track and post time and expenses, and process billings under a number of different scenarios. Using NetSuite SRP, project and resource managers will find the information they need at their fingertips to make proactive, informed decisions about their projects with dashboards that present real-time KPIs and other key information.

In this blog, we'll preview some of the features you’ll learn about during the NetSuite SRP session at nVerge In the Cloud, our free online technology conference. From quickly creating a project using templates, allocating resources, capturing labor and expenses, and processing billing, we’ll show you how NetSuite SRP can help your business complete its projects more efficiently.

Templates:

Creating projects in NetSuite is a breeze with project templates. Project templates facilitate the configuration of the project record allowing you to create it within minutes.

Using the templates, we can preconfigure project tasks and predecessors, estimated effort, generic resource assignments, project dates, and preferences.

In the project template below, you can see the preconfigured tasks tied together to facilitate the timeline based on the start date.

NetSuite Project Template

Resource Allocation

Taking a closer look at one of the tasks on the project template, you can see that the template allows us to pre-assign generic resources that can later be updated with specific names once we've conducted our resource capacity planning meetings.

NetSuite Solutoin Design Review Template

Understanding resource capacity and skill set availability are key parts of delivering projects on time and within budget. The NetSuite Resource Allocation Grid provides a visual representation of resource capacity for quick decisions on scheduling and availability.

As shown below, we can create a new resource allocation directly from the "Resource Allocations" grid, as well as define the required availability, skill set, and other search parameters.

NetSuite Resource Allocations Menu

NetSuite Search Resource Menu

NetSuite New Resource Allocation

After we have established project resource allocations, replacing generic resources with specific resources is easy. Replacement of the generic resources can be done across the entire project at once, rather than a single task at a time, using the "Reassign Tasks" feature.

In the example below, you can see that the generic resource "Consultant" is being replaced by Abby Kwan for the Solution Design Review (Onsite) and Initialization tasks.

NetSuite Reassign Generic Resource

Time Entry

Now that we've assigned resources to all project tasks and begun working on our project, we can start entering time cards against the project.

Entering time is device and browser agnostic in NetSuite. NetSuite has developed both iPhone and   Android compatible NetSuite apps which can be used to record time. Don’t have a smartphone? No need to worry, you can simply input time directly from any internet browser.

Weekly timesheets are recorded along with the appropriate billing notes and submitted to supervisors for review and approval. Once a timesheet is approved and posted, the associated labor cost is allocated to the project.

Here is an example of Abby's weekly timesheet as she's getting ready to submit for approval:

NetSuite Timesheet

Other transactions such as expense reports and vendor payables can also be tracked in real time against NetSuite projects. Here we have an expense report submitted into the approval workflow by Abby. Her supervisor will be notified on the NetSuite Home Page that an expense report is pending review and approval.

NetSuite Expense Report

Project Billing

As the project manager, Marc has been keeping an eye on the tasks and sees that the team has reached a billing milestone in the project. As seen in the NetSuite project dashboard pictured below, the first three project tasks have been completed and the Contract Signature milestone has been reached. This means we're ready to generate project billing!

NetSuite Project Dashboard

Before we move on to billing, I'd like to comment a little on NetSuite's flexible project billing options. While we know that "if you can sell it, NetSuite can bill it!" I am going to focus on just a few billing options, otherwise, we'd be here for a while!

The following are 4 project billing types found in NetSuite:

  1. Time and Materials Billing: Allows users to bill customers for actual project expenses, such as resource time and materials.
  2. Fixed Bid, Interval Billing Schedules: Allows users to bill customers for work completed at predefined intervals.
  3. Fixed Bid, Milestone Billing Schedules: Allows users to bill customers based on the percentage of work completed, or preset milestones.
  4. Charge-Based Project Billing: Allows users to create charge rules that provide flexibility for calculating the billable value of projects.

In our example project, the team is leveraging the Charge-Based Project Billing option, whereby a "Contract Signature" charge rule was set up to monitor the status of the Contract Signature milestone.

The Charge-Based Project Billing engine automatically runs and captures any event that triggers a pending charge on the project. Since the status of the "Contract Signature" milestone was set to completed, we can see below that we now have a pending charge of $2,500.00 that is up for review.

NetSuite Review Charges

Once the pending charges are reviewed, the milestone invoice (#0776) is generated. As shown below, the invoice is a related record on the project. This provides great traceability from a project billing standpoint.

NetSuite Invoice

Looking back at the project record, we can clearly see project progress and status.

NetSuite Project Record

Interested in a closer look at NetSuite SRP?

There are many more functions within the NetSuite SRP module that can help your business complete its projects more efficiently so you can get paid faster!

Please join us for our free nVerge In the Cloud NetSuite SRP session, “Take Control Over Your Projects with NetSuite Services Resource Planning” on September 8, 2016. During this 1 hour session, we'll take a deeper dive into the features presented in this blog as well as the other great functions within this suite.

If you have questions about NetSuite SRP, nVerge, or just want to talk about how you can get your business started with NetSuite, don’t hesitate to contact us using the form below.

©
2024
 FMT Consultants
|
Privacy Policy
|
Your Privacy Choices
X
FMT

Contact Us

X
FMT

Newsletter Sign-up

menu linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram