Topic: ‘Projects’

Scheduling tools are critical for manufacturing and engineering environments.  It provides the ability to minimize production time and costs by identifying resources available and utilizing them in the most efficient manner possible.

The definition of scheduling is ‘To plan or appoint for a certain time or date’.  To take it one step further, production scheduling is ‘The management and allocation of resources, events and processes to create goods and services’. Read the rest of this entry »

 AX 2012 & ADM (Advanced Discrete Manufacturing) contain functionality to optimize, engineer-to-order (ETO), make-to-order (MTO), configure-to-order (CTO) and assemble-to-order (ATO) business processes.  ADM utilizes standard functionality but adds critical components where concurrent engineering is required as well as project specific planning and analysis is required. Read the rest of this entry »

1)      Project / Sub-Projects

Projects and associated sub-projects can be used from internal tracking of costs associated with sales to a contract and tracking of incurred costs / actuals.

The following is an example of a project that includes multiple project types within the same parent project. Read the rest of this entry »

Project Accounting in AX 2012 has undergone some enhancements to improve the experience of managing and working with a project.  From collaboration tools, to project budgeting and change control, to the enhanced use of Enterprise Portal, to multiple funding and grants applied across projects, the solid functionality has been greatly improved.

The following is a brief overview of some of these enhancements. Read the rest of this entry »

Functionality is now available in Dynamics AX 2012 Project Accounting to calculate and posts indirect costs to a project.  This allows for indirect costs such as rent, office supplies, telephone charges, computer supplies, etc. to be allocated across multiple projects.  It also provides the ability to post indirect costs / burden rate, against labor incurred on a project.

This document is providing an overview of the setup required to allow the process of posting indirect costs against incurred labor on a project. Read the rest of this entry »

Revenue recognition against an AX project is accomplished through the setup of an estimate project associated with the project.  Sub-projects can also have separate estimate projects created and associated with them to allow for the estimation and elimination at various levels of a project.  Standard revenue recognition methods (completed contract or percentage of completion) still applies to the estimate project regardless of the level within the project. 

When using project templates in the creation of a new project, if the template is setup with estimate projects (set at applicable levels), the new project will also be created with estimate projects setup on the same levels as the originating template.  Adjustments can be made on the new project once created.

Identifying the requirement for items against a project or sub-project can be accomplished in more than one way directly on the level(s) required.  Creation of these item requirements is critical in identifying demand and easily create purchase orders to provide the supply.  In addition to the ability to add individual items, as required, a bill of material or a parts list can also be exploded to a project / sub-project’s item requirements.  When these items are identified on the line(s), a sales order is created behind the scenes.  If you look at the sales order form, these appear as type ‘item requirement’.

AX functionality then allows the creation of purchase orders directly from these item requirements.  The items listed, available to release on a purchase order, is dependent on how the item requirements were created.  If the items were created from a quotation, only one sales order was created.  All items on the same ‘sales order’ are then listed for selection of creating a purchase order.  However, if lines are created manually on the item requirements, a new sales order will be created, for each line entered) and these items will appear on a separate purchase order for selection.

The way around this is to manually add the item(s) to the item requirement ‘sales order’ which will in turn make the selection for the creation of a purchase order visually on the same list.

Keys to remember:

1) Projects created a sales order (type item requirement) against the item requirement(s) of the project.  This sales order creates the demand.

2)  At the point of creating a purchase order against the item requirements, AX is actually creating purchase orders against the sales order.)