Project reporting and budget tracking recommendations

Project chart hierarchy

Create an alternate chart hierarchy for projects which only includes project accounts. The projects chart hierarchy is a subset of the enterprise chart hierarchy. For example, work in progress asset, billed and unearned liability, project direct and indirected expenses, and project revenue accounts. A project chart hierarchy is required for project reporting, project budget edit, and tracking.

The project chart should be assigned to:

  • Project reporting setting parameters
  • Global Ledger account analysis settings used for project cost analysis
  • Reporting basis assigned to the project budget
  • Reporting basis used for project reporting in Infor BI

A project chart is required for any reports where amounts are determined by reading the cube roll up amounts or balances, including total obligations. A project chart is a subset of the Global Ledger chart of accounts, not a new chart. The accounts that are used for project reporting are specified by a project chart.

Project Ledger

Create a Project Ledger-specific code for posting transactions, direct entries, indirect entries, and statistical entries to Project Ledger only. These entries that will not post to Global Ledger or specific Global Ledger reporting bases. Create a single code and description to be used or associated with journals that are only reported in projects.

Project reporting basis

Create a project-specific reporting basis for project reporting, budget edit, and tracking. Assign the project chart hierarchy to the project reporting basis. Assigning the hierarchy to the reporting basis is critical for calculation of actuals and total obligations required for budget edit calculations. Budget templates which include the account dimension but no valid accounts are not flagged as included in the budget template group in the hierarchy. In this case, the chart hierarchy is used to determine the valid accounts used to calculate actuals and total obligations. This is applicable to single or multiple reporting bases or parameters used for project reporting. For example, you could have two project reporting bases for capital projects reporting basis and grant sponsored projects.

Note: A common mistake with initial setup is selecting the enterprise chart of accounts for the project budget reporting basis. The enterprise chart includes all posting accounts, including the system undistributed retained earnings account. Calculation of total obligations will include the undistributed retained earnings entries. The undistributed retained earnings account is updated whenever journal entries that include income statement accounts to Global Ledger are posted. Undistributed retained earnings entries are created and posted to all dimensions, including project and user dimensions.

Cube refresh

Financials have been designed and built around analytics. Any reports requiring balance or rollup amounts read the cube to get rollup amounts. Infor BI App Studio reports and any of the standard Landmark reports including GL Account Analysis, Project Obligations and Project Variance are included. We recommend creating a scheduled action to refresh the cube periodically throughout the day.

Local and cube obligations

Local obligations will always run ahead of cube obligations. Local obligations are updated immediately when the transaction passes through the queue. For example, passing a budget edit check. Cube obligations are updated when the GeneralLedgerTotal is updated and the cube is refreshed. When releasing a requisition or purchase order and the transaction passes the budget edit, the transaction updates the BudgetGroupTotal which makes up local obligations. Local obligations are updated in real time. The cube and cube obligations are not updated unit the next refresh.