Design detail: project status
In Industrial Equipment Manufacturing, Project Control Suite is a complete project management solution to manage projects effectively from within Business Central. Start with defining a project deliverable, costs, tasks, and task sequence to calculate a timeline. Track project task progress with lifecycle-based status control, and charge costs (including resource, material, and equipment usage) to a project during execution.
Full integration with Microsoft Dynamics Business Central sales, purchasing, assembly, inventory and warehouse management, manufacturing, and service management keeps you in touch with every aspect of a project through its execution.
Planning
The project is being planned. When a project has the status Planning, you can make preliminary calculations and set up the project's structure before reaching the Quote status.
Use estimates to create a high-level cost estimate based on elements and activities for the project, to be detailed out in the Quote status.
Create a project in the Planning status by selecting Planning in the Create Project Wizard. Either specify a template or leave the fields on the second page of the wizard empty to estimate the project.
From the Planning status, you can create a service object from the project deliverable. With this service object, the service department can start planning and prepare service contracts. When the project progresses, service items are added to the service object.
Quote
A project quote is a special kind of sales quote. When a project has the status Quote, you can make preliminary calculations and offer the project to a customer. You can set up or change the project's structure and schedule.
Create a project quote from the Planning status, directly from an opportunity, through the Create Project Wizard, or manually through the New action. You can create a project quote for a contact in combination with a customer template.
When an estimate exists, break it down into budget lines with the Breakdown function, where each project cost type per element can be broken down into individual budget lines.
You can archive project quotes to work with several versions of the project quote. The current version is always the active one. Create a new version by archiving the current version or restoring a previously archived version.
When the project quote is won and promoted to the Order status, a customer is created (when required) and the project quote is archived. When a project quote is lost, the status changes to Completed.
Open
A project with the status Open is a special kind of sales order. Every control feature of the project can be maintained (Planning, WIP, Posting). Use sales invoices and credit memos to invoice the project as per the invoicing method.
You can select project items for which a Service Item Group is selected and where Create Service Item is enabled. Select them from the Project Item List and create them as service items. When creating the service item, you can link it to the project's service object.
Completed
The project is done. Use the Completed status to close the project. You can use the statistics on a completed project for comparison purposes and for planning future projects. Compare the actual costs of the completed project to the scheduled figures. Keep this information not only for comparison, but also as a guideline or template for future projects.
See also
Welcome to Industrial Equipment Manufacturing