Hello, we are just trialling project module to manage projects where we are manufacturing to order and installing our product, especially where the customer requires applications for payment. We intend to use Fixed Fee invoicing. Our consultants have suggested not generating the shipment invoice when we ship goods by means of a BPM that changes the shipment status directly to Invoiced when shipped so these do not get considered for invoice generation. However, our finance team are keen to see revenue recognised when goods are shipped, rather than wait for the project billing to be approved and posted (this could be weeks after the goods are shipped to site). Can anyone advise on whether it is possible to do this and how one would go about it?
I am only learning about the project module, billing, and revenue recognition so any support would be appreciated.
Carl Mumford
M: +44(0)7848 453224
@cmd1 we are also an Engineer to order company and use the Project Billing module. A lot of our customers use pay apps and there isn’t a great solution to generate a payapp that correctly generates all the info expected on a pay app. So what we typically do is fill out the pay app in excel and send it to the customer. Then we create a fixed fee invoice through the project entry module with 1 line that matches the total of the payapp. B/c we never really send the epicor invoice to the customer, I only create 1 Billing Schedule, 1 schedule of work and 1 measured work and then generate a billing activity for each submission of the pay app, see screen shots below. You could certainly break it out into more detail, but we’ve found we don’t need that b/c it’s all captured in the payapp.
The project billing module offers multiple other ways to bill as well. Unfortunately they all require different processes and recognition procedures, which just adds bloat to your process (IMO). Doing it this way doesn’t require you to ship “jobs”. Unfortunately epicor also doesn’t really have any great project costing reporting (IMO), so we have a custom report that is used to monitor project costing.
If you do proceed with the project module, I would HIGHLY recommend that you add dymanic segments to your GL accounts and you capture your costs by project at the GL level.
Hopefully you find some of that useful. I’m happy to try and answer additional questions you have.
Many thanks Bobby, appreciate your help.We will probably follow a similar method.
We have the conundrum that the finance team want to use the system to manage the payapps and ultimate billing through the projects module which should work fine for us, but on the accounts they want to recognise the revenue as soon as we ship or install goods, not wait for the payapp to be approved and invoiced. I don’t think the system is set up to do this but we’re hoping for some sort of a workaround.