Posts Tagged ‘client’
Project Accounting Software Best Practices When Developing Residential Estates
If you’re involved with construction for a Residential Estate then these “best practices” for using your Project Accounting Software will help your client with their dealings with their financiers as well as simplifying your project manager’s work.
However before you look at your software, it’s best to have a clear idea of the processes involved when undertaking a broad-acre conversion to a residential housing estate.
The Big Picture
To start with you know that the financier backing your developer client is not going to take on the all of the Risk involved with constructing the total number of homes that can fit on the broad-acreage. They will aim to minimise their risk by staging the development.
So the the broad-acreage will be conceptually divided into several Development Stages. The first stage release will commence with the construction of a display village consisting of one of each house type. This enables their sales team to walk prospective clients through a completed home and to estimate the cost of changes to the basic design on a client by client basis.
After sufficient sales are made in Stage 1 the developer will release another Stage downstream and in the process build a new display village and sell off the first display homes you constructed.
This provides a positive cash flow for the developer as they progress through building the remaining stages and in doing so lessens the risk for the financier.
Now we understand the big picture, we have to determine how best to manage this Contract using our project accounting software.
One Project or Many Projects?
You may think it a good idea to set up each home as a project but there are disadvantages to this simplistic approach – particularly in terms of reporting.
It would be best if the whole Estate was defined as a single Project and then as you undertake construction you define each house, being the Scope of Works, as a Stage within that project in your project accounting software. The use here of the term “Stage” should not be confused with the “Staged releases” of land within the estate.
Better Client Reporting
One benefit of this approach is that it makes it easier to produce the reporting that your client the developer needs to provide to their Financiers to convince them that their risks are being managed properly. This is because you can produce “big picture” plus” drilled down” reporting as required.
Management Focus
The Stages approach also helps your project managers focus on the construction as they can see all the information about an individual house and follow it right through the system. In effect you have a “sub-cost report” for just a single house.
Managing Subcontractors
When a new house is required to be constructed, then you would add a new Stage and then allocate your tradespeople to work on it. The scheduling process will easily identify the extra details.
If we examine the Subcontractor Payment Claims process then each tradesman has an original contract for work on other stages (homes) so if they win another stage (home) then it will just be another amendment to their contract. You can then pay the subcontractor by stage and in the process make tracking and controlling the processes easier.
Complementary Projects
Depending upon how you contract with the developer you may in fact be establishing two projects – not one – for the entire estate. This would be the case if you decided to use a Complementary Project approach.
This approach enables you to manage the construction project on an “open book” basis, with the developer taking the risk and some portion of the work charged at agreed rates. You would take a small risk for the preliminary items but have an agreed rate of recovery for selected services such as project management on an hourly basis.
To do this in your construction accounting software you would establish one project as open book with the client, where the budgets equal the agreed target prices of the client. In this project, the income is equal to the expenses so there is no profit. But you link this project with a second project which invoices the first project for the value of contracted services at the agreed rates.
Payment Options
The next point to consider is how to pay subcontractors and suppliers in the first project so that it doesn’t effect your cash-flow.
Ideally the client should setup a trust account and you pay contractors out of this account based upon a client approved payment list. However some developers may insist upon greater control of the “purse strings”. In this case you could still control all the subcontractor claims paperwork within your construction accounting software and at the end of each Pay-run send the direct deposits data file to your client so the developer can pay off this file using their own bank.
So the developer controls the “purse strings” but your project managers manage the job without you assuming the financial risk.
The practices should enable you to make better use of your project accounting software when your constructing for a Residential Estate Developer.
The author Ronald Skeoch is the founder of Muli Management Pty Ltd, an Australian software developer of Project Accounting Software .
Posted in Info | 
Tags: Accounting, acre conversion, best, client, developer, Developing, Estates, positive cash flow, Practices, project, Residential, scope of works, software | 
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Microsoft Project Professional 2007 Version Upgrade 1 Client
- Previous Version of Microsoft Project Professional
- Upgrade available on these qualifying applications: Microsoft Access 2000-2002; Microsoft Office Access 2003; Microsoft Works 6.0-10; Microsoft Works Suite 2000-2006 or later; any 2000-2007 Microsoft Office suite; and any Microsoft Office XP suite
- Includes all the capabilities in Microsoft Office Project Standard 2007, plus a Client Access License (CAL), which enables connection to Office Project Server 2007 and thus provides additional collaborative enterprise project management capabilities
- Helps you effectively track and analyze projects with a better understanding of the schedule and impact of changes; benefit from better financial control and richer analytics
- Improved Task Drivers help you determine the factor (such as task dependency, calendar constraints, schedule date, or vacation time) driving the start date of the task
- Automatically highlights all items that shift as a result of the most recent change; delivers flexible project tracking and analysis by helping you to compute and track core metrics unique to your project
Product Description
Office Project Professional 2007 gives you robust project management tools with the right blend of usability, power, and flexibility, so you can manage projects more efficiently and effectively. You can stay informed, control project work, schedules, and finances, and keep project teams aligned, while becoming more productive through integration with familiar Microsoft Office system programs, powerful reporting options, as well as guided planning, wizards, and templates. Office Project Professional 2007 provides enterprise project management capabilities when connected to Microsoft Office Project Server 2007.
Main Features
Get Productive Quickly:
Understand and Control Project Schedules and Finances:
Effectively Communicate and Present Project Information:
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Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007 helps you stay informed, keep project teams aligned, and control project work, schedules, and finances. Integration with familiar Microsoft Office system programs, powerful reporting options, and guided planning, wizards, and templates help you become more productive. This version upgrade of Project Professional 2007 is available to those who have one of the following qualifying applications: Microsoft Project Professional 2000-2002; Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003; Microsoft Project 2000; Microsoft Project Standard 2000-2002; and Microsoft Office Project Standard 2003-2007.
Visual highlights of a change’s impacts are indicated in light green. View larger. |
The Gantt view with the Project Guide Tasks pane showing on the left. View larger. |
With Multiple Level Undo you can safely experiment with various what-if scenarios. View larger. |
Visual Reports creates templates in Excel or Visio Professional. View larger. |
Client Access License For Additional Collaborative Solutions
Project Professional 2007 includes all the innovative capabilities available in Microsoft Office Project Standard 2007, as well as a Client Access License (CAL), which enables connection to Office Project Server 2007 and thus provides additional collaborative enterprise project management capabilities.
This version of Office Project Professional 2007 is designed to be run as a single-user solution.
Understand and Control Project Schedules
Project 2007 helps you effectively track and analyze projects with a better understanding of the schedule and impact of changes, while also allowing you to benefit from better financial control and richer analytics. This application now offers the ability to quickly determine factors that are affecting task dates and easily trace the source of issues. Specifically, improved Task Drivers help you determine the factor (such as task dependency, calendar constraints, schedule date, or vacation time) driving the start date of the task, so you can follow a chain of factors back to find the root cause of a particular delay. Project 2007 also automatically highlights all items that shift as a result of the most recent changes made. You can even undo actions or sets of actions from macros, and that gives you the ability to test several “what-if” scenarios in order to fully understand the implications of each choice while making scope alterations.
Background Cell Highlighting. View larger. |
Effectively Communicate and Present Project Information
Project Standard 2007 offers scheduling power and enhanced capabilities that can help improve the organization of your projects. Easily report and communicate information in various formats according to the needs of stakeholders. New leverage charts and diagrams will capture attention, thanks to the Visual Reports feature, which uses Excel and Visio Professional to produce PivotTable views, charts, graphs, and diagrams based on Project data. You can also enjoy the option of changing the background color of a cell or row with Background Cell Highlighting. Shade cells, similar to how you can in Excel, in order to convey additional meaning. In addition, any user can easily define custom report templates and share these with other Project users.
Flexible Project Tracking
Project 2007 delivers flexible project tracking and analysis by helping you to compute and track core metrics unique to your project by defining custom fields based on your formulas. And to help keep you on track, graphical indicators can alert you when specific conditions are met.
Improved Views and Sharing
With new enhancements to the Calendar interface and the addition of 3-D Gantt bars, Project 2007 lets you create even more visually effective reports. When it’s time to share them, use Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services workspaces (requires Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or later), which are integrated into the Tasks pane of the Project Guide, a step-by-step, interactive aid that helps you set up projects, manage tasks and resources, track status, and report project information. This helps you better organize work and people to help ensure projects are delivered on time and within budget.
Easily Control Finances
Project 2007 features a budget field that lets you assign budgets to projects and programs. The new “Cost” resource type improves cost estimation and tracking, thanks to enhancements like more predefined fields, such as cost code, that map to financial fields tracked in project accounting systems.
Microsoft Project Professional 2007 Version Upgrade 1 Client
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Tags: 2007, client, enterprise project management, Microsoft, microsoft access 2000, Professional, project, project management capabilities, upgrade, Version |
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