For Immediate Release

Maximizing on time and on budget delivery of projects while maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction are the goals of every project-based organization. Project managers, resource managers, business managers, consultants, executives, team members, IT professionals and accounting staff must work together to achieve these goals using tools tailored to their specific roles and responsibilities.

The combination of the Microsoft Great Plains Solomon IV project accounting solution and the new, enterprise version of Microsoft® Project provides project stakeholders with the tools they need to be successful . This end-to-end solution provides powerful functionality for managing all phases of a project - from planning, scheduling and status review to expense capture, profitability analysis and billing.

• Improve strategic planning by connecting project management activities to project accounting and company financials.
• Increase project profitability through efficient cost management and tracking.
• Improve cash flow by facilitating the collection of all project costs and automating the flow of information through the invoicing process.
• Automate and streamline budgeting, capture, invoicing and reporting of project costs and revenue

• Project and portfolio management
• Resource management
• Web-based collaboration
• Document and issues tracking
• Budgeting and forecasting
• Time and expense capture
• Revenue recognition
• Business intelligence
• Financial analysis
• Billing and invoicing
• Rule-based workflow and variance alerts
• Customization and programmability

• Flexible set-up. Create integrated projects and budgets in either Microsoft Project or Solomon IV Project Series so project managers and accounting staff can use the tools most appropriate for them.
• Project activation workflow. Notify accounting or business managers via email/workflow alerts when it is time to review new project plans, add accounting detail (e.g., overhead, revenue recognition, allocation methods, etc.), and activate projects for time and expense capture by the project team.
• Database integration. Eliminate the need for file import/export and time consuming duplicate data entry with two-way integration at the database level of projects, phases, tasks and subtasks.
• Shared resources. Search for and assign resources based on skills and availability using a common enterprise resource pool across Microsoft Project and Solomon IV Project Series.
• Enterprise templates. Incorporate custom accounting data for display in Microsoft Project using the new enterprise-wide templates to allow for consistent reporting across your portfolio of projects.
• Cost capture flexibility. Allow your resources to collect time and expenses against all Microsoft Project tasks or choose only a subset of tasks for cost capture.
• Status updates. Update actual work (i.e., % complete) in Microsoft Project using labor hours captured in the time collection system to provide project managers with status updates tied to accounting actuals.
• Labor costs and budgets. Give project managers rapid access to accounting-based labor budgets and actual labor costs within Microsoft Project to display salient project detail in a single view.
• Time and Expense approvals. Display cost actuals in Microsoft Project only after project manager and/or supervisor approval.
• Access to rates. Pass standard cost rates from project accounting for use in the Microsoft Project enterprise resource pool to give project managers better control over changing budgets.
• Beyond labor. Track other project expenses like AP transactions, material costs and overhead costs along with actual labor costs to see a more complete picture of project status and profitability.