8/1 Project Financials

Situation:

An organization is already using NetSuite's native class, department & location segments for tracking financials. They would now like to track an additional cost center dimension representing activities, projects or grants where multiple funders contribute to a project & expenses are charged to a project.

Solution Overview:

Create  a dummy customer record to act as a container for project records. Each project is represented by a NetSuite project record under that dummy customer record. Use default NetSuite reports (income statement by project, customer profitability report & budget vs. actual report) to manage projects.

NOTE: You may record grants as NetSuite project records (i.e. "Gates Foundation: 2012 Youth Involvement") AND record projects as NetSuite project records (i.e. "Project Code: 2012 Youth Involvement Project"). You will not be able to bill an expense to both the grant & the project using this configuration.

The NetSuite instance supports four dimensions in this scenario:

1. Class (native dimension)
2. Department (native dimension)
3. Location (native dimension)
4. Project Code / Cost Center (dimension via project functionality)

Grant  income, expenses & balances cannot be tracked in parallel with cost centers in this model. Each grant must be a cost center.

Supported Use Cases:

1. Budget by project
   
   1. Create a budget for each project
   2. Generate a budget vs. actual report for each project
2. Drill down under a project code
   
   1. Drill down into an income statement for a project
   2. Drill down into a balance sheet for a project
3. Produce income statement & balance sheet with multiple columns for multiple projects

General Configuration

1. Create dummy customer record. Type=company; name=”Project Code”
2. For each project you wish to track, create a new NetSuite project record
3. For expenses, code the appropriate Customer:Project value in the Customer:Project column at the transaction line level
4. To assign revenue to a Project Code, you would create journal to move revenue from a grant “Gates Foundation: Youth Project” to a project code “Project Code: Gates Foundation Youth Project”.
5. Use an income statement filtered for "Project Code: Gates Foundation Youth Project" to manage a project income statement.
6. Use a budget vs. actual report filtered for "Project Code: Gates Foundation Youth Project" to manage a project budget vs. actual
7. Use a customer profitability report to manage all projects from a high level view.

Create budget by project code

Set up budgets per the normal NetSuite budget process.

Specify Customer/Project = to the appropriate project code you are budgeting for.

Run a standard budget vs. actual report restricted to the customer/project

Drill down by project code

Drill down from the budget vs. actual is supported.

From the income statement, limit the income statement to the appropriate customer/project (Project Code)

Income Statement & Balance Sheet with column per Project Code

No simple way in this configuration unless project codes are replicated in a native NetSuite dimension.

Determine whether to approve PO mid month

Use the native customer profitability report.

This will not include encumbrances. You can add a saved search to generate the encumbrance component on a separate report.