Use the Consultant Accruals feature to budget project expenses at the vendor/consultant level using the Project Budget Worksheet, post expenses as they accrue for vendors/consultants, and compare accrued expenses to budgeted expenses.
Consultant Accrual allows you to:
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Calculate accrual amounts based on budget, estimate-to-complete or estimate-at-completion amounts.
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Post accruals as they are generated.
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Suppress billing.
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Update percent completes; you can drill down to compensation and billed detail.
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Send reports to a process server for printing.
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Save report settings.
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Select accounts singly, by account type, or by project.
The Consultant Accrual feature complements the Revenue Generation feature. Use Revenue Generation to recognize revenue when it is earned instead of when it is invoiced, and Consultant Accruals to recognize vendor/consultant expenses when they are incurred instead of when they are billed to you. This enables you to more accurately assess project profitability, because the project's financial data does not depend on the varied billing practices of your vendors or consultants.
Typically, when vendors/consultants complete their work, they generate and submit an invoice. Often, though, the invoice arrives weeks or months after the work has been completed. This can distort your project reports because the vendor/consultant expense has been budgeted and spent, but not yet applied to the project's expense totals. The automated consultant accrual allows you to accrue a dollar amount equal to the work performed but not yet billed by the vendor/consultant. This amount is captured in a Consultant Accrual account, which you define on the Posting tab of
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Consultant Accrual Calculations
Each time you process Consultant Accruals for a project, Vision calculates and posts a journal entry for each of the projects' budgeted accounts, based on the project's percent complete data and the options specified when you set up Consultant Accruals. Each entry consists of a debit to the budgeted account and a credit to the Consultant Accrual account.
You can choose one of three methods as the basis for accrual calculations:
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Calculation
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Budget Method
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(Percent Complete * Budget) – Job-to-Date Spent
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Estimate-to-Complete Method
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[(Job-to-Date Spent + Estimate-to-Complete) * Percent Complete] – Job-to-Date Spent
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Estimate-at-Completion Method
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(Percent Complete * Estimate-at-Completion) – Job-to-Date Spent
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Timing
You should process Consultant Accruals when any of the following changes occur in a project's data:
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Percent completes are updated.
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Consultant voucher or expense reports are posted.
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Budget amounts are updated.
Consultant Accrual Reports
Consultant Accrual transactions appear on the Income Statement, Project Progress, Project Detail, Office Earnings, and Consultant Ledger reports.