Project Charge Types

When you set up a project in DPS, you must assign it a project charge type to determine how labor and expense costs are charged to the project.

You select the project charge type on the Accounting tab of the Projects hub in the desktop application.

Three charge types are available:

• Regular: A regular project is a project that produces revenue. Typically, each of the projects for which your enterprise receives compensation is a regular project. Costs charged to regular projects include direct labor, direct expenses, and reimbursable expenses.

  Regular projects accumulate transactions for the life of the project.

• Overhead: An overhead project is a project that does not produce revenue. Typical overhead projects include Marketing, Administration, and Professional Development. You charge all indirect labor (for example, accounting and administrative time) and all indirect expenses (for example, rent and utilities) to overhead projects. You can then distribute these costs to your regular projects.

  Overhead projects accumulate transactions for the current year only. At year-end, DPS zeroes-out overhead projects so that they can begin accumulating transactions for the new year.

• Promotional: A promotional project is a type of overhead project that can overlap fiscal years. Promotional projects accumulate costs associated with projects that have not yet reached the contract stage. Do not confuse promotional projects with opportunities. You cannot charge expenses to an opportunity.

  You set up a promotional project when you want to begin charging expenses to an opportunity (for example, when you start developing a project proposal or after you win a project and begin negotiating contract terms with the client).

  DPS does not zero-out promotional projects at year-end. Promotional projects accumulate transactions for the life of the project.

In some cases, the project numbers that you use are projects in the traditional sense: regular, revenue-producing jobs. For example, when a survey crew goes to a construction site, the crew charges its labor to the construction project.

In other cases, the project numbers that you use are projects in a different sense: they are repositories for overhead information. For example, when a member of your accounting staff spends the day processing payments to vendors, that employee charges labor to an overhead project.

If you use the Organization Reporting application, project numbers have a third use: they steer project-related transactions to the appropriate organization’s Balance Sheet accounts. For example, you may have one office in Boston and another in Atlanta. When work is performed on a project owned by the Boston office, the labor charge is applied to the Boston office’s Balance Sheet.