I have a question for those more familiar with the Project Module in Epicor. We are currently implementing this module for one of our companies and will be using the WBS phase functionality to collect additional cost not relating to deliverable part numbers.
As I currently understand, Epicor creates a Job number for the Project that acts as the header, then, for each WBS phase, it creates sub jobs. My question is what happens to the cost on the WBS phase jobs once the project closes? We do not want it to go to variance so I’m wondering if any additional steps need to be taken to prevent that. Typically, one would transact the job to stock, a job, or a sales order but not sure if that’s applicable here. My only other thought would be to just close the Job and configure a GL control to re-direct the variance to COS. If anyone has experience or a procedure they follow to account for this, I would greatly appreciate the insight.
WBS Phase Jobs are not designed to produce parts, only to capture non-production costs. When these jobs are closed, those costs will flow to however you have the WBS Phase set up for them to flow. Each WBS Phase can have its own GL Controls so you can have those costs go wherever you want them.
The documentation is pretty vague, but the key point is setting up your GL Control Codes… and then testing the living daylights out of all the scenarios you can think of in you PILOT environment!
Then, if I understand correctly, when you close a WBS phase job, it uses Epicor’s standard posting rules and will hit the Variance account contexts once WIP is captured. I would have to create a GL control code and put the accounts I want it to hit in those variance contexts. What confuses me is that the Project Billing GL Control Type does not have Variance account contexts:
That makes me wonder if Epicor has its own posting rules for WBS phase jobs, and maybe by default those costs go to Cost of Sales once the job is closed/cleared. I understand I will likely have to test it out to get my answers but am curious what other people do as I feel this would be a common problem.
We’re now beyond my knowledge horizon… I’m not a Finance guy. I’ll see if I can get one of our Finance folks to chime in… or if anyone else wants to feel free!
Not a finance guy either but do know for project some codes come from the Product Group control codes (on SOLine associated to the Phase) while others come from the Project Billing control codes.
There is no project specific posting hierarcy documentation to my knowledge so we did weeks of trial and error until it worked okay for us.
Thank you, Mark. I had not seen that yet. Since we are not invoicing WBS phases, I will have to continue to test to see how the costs flow.
I fear we are not using the project module as Epicor fully intends. For the most part, we are just using it as a cost collector, not for revenue recognition or customer billing.
Instead, we set up milestones as line items on the sales order and discount the deliverable part numbers to account for the amount we get paid from the milestones. Finance recognizes revenue through manual journal entries.
Because of this, I will probably have to do use GL control codes to direct variance elsewhere, but will see what happens…
FWIW, we do milestone billings out of project and it works okay (with caveats).
For example, ‘20% with order’, ‘40% upon procurement’ are project milestones linked to the SOrderLine (unfortunately they don’t do SOLineRel so we must do SOLines qty 1 for this to work).
Milestones are marked complete manually by PM user or can be done automatically via criteria linked to operations or phases.
This makes them billable in AR Invoicing via Get Milestone Billings process and advance billings are generated as deferred revenue, I believe. The remaining 40% is what automatically goes on the Customer Shipment Invoice when the SOLine ships.
