Project Management

Deliver projects on scope, on budget — and actually know your margin.

Our Perspective

Project businesses rarely lose money on the jobs they know are in trouble — they lose it on the ones that looked fine right up until the final invoice. Costs creep, scope drifts, time goes uncaptured, and by the time the numbers are reconciled, the margin is already spent. The gap is always the same: delivery and finance working from different sheets, comparing notes too late. Business Central ties every hour and every cost straight to the project and the ledger, so a slipping margin shows up while you can still do something about it — not in the post-mortem.

Project Management — the module Microsoft renamed from Jobs to Projects — connects planning, resourcing, time capture, costing and billing directly to your general ledger. Every hour logged and every cost incurred flows to the project and the books at the same time, so there is no month-end scramble to work out where you landed. It's built for services, consulting, engineering and project-based businesses that need to know, in real time, whether each engagement is actually making money.

What you can do

• Plan and budget: Break work into projects, tasks and planning lines, then track budget versus actual as time, materials and cost post against each one.
• Manage resources: Assign people and equipment to the work, capture time sheets and see utilisation and capacity across the whole team.
• Invoice flexibly: Bill on fixed price, time-and-materials, milestones or a mix, and recognise revenue accurately as the work is delivered.
• Stay connected to finance: Roll project costs and income straight into the ledger, so finance, delivery and the project owner all see the same numbers.

Inside Business Central

Each engagement is a Project (formerly Job) with Project Tasks and Project Planning Lines that separate Budget from Billable, so you can compare planned, used and invoiced at any moment. Project Journals post time, item and G/L cost; Resources and Resource Groups carry cost and sales prices, and feed Time Sheets with approval. Work-in-Progress (WIP) methods — cost value, sales value and percentage of completion among them — recognise revenue and cost correctly, and Project Quotes flow into orders and invoices. You bill on planning lines as fixed price, time-and-materials or milestone, post to the ledger with full dimension detail, and report profitability per project, task and resource.

The business impact

• Protect margin by spotting overruns while you can still act on them, not in the post-mortem after the project closes.
• Invoice faster and more accurately against what was actually delivered, improving cash flow on every engagement.
• See true project profitability with costs and revenue tracked against each task, person and phase.
• Improve resource planning and reduce the bench time and over-servicing that quietly erode profit.

Works with

Project Management feeds directly into Financial Management for costing and revenue recognition, and into Sales for client billing and contracts. Capture time and collaborate in Microsoft 365 and Teams, report delivery, WIP and utilisation in Power BI, and add a dedicated project or PSA (professional services automation) extension from AppSource when you need advanced scheduling and resource optimisation.

DIY-ERP Implementation

Project structures, WIP methods, resources and billing rules are configured inside Business Central by the DIY-ERP toolkit and taught to your Super User as they're built — not from a manual afterwards. You agree the scope, we guarantee the price and the go-live date, and you finish able to set up and adjust projects yourself without calling anyone.