Today I went to see a client who had been sold the Sage 200 Projects Module previously by another Sage Business Partner. They use sage 200 purely as a finance package through various imports and when they actually looked into the projects module, for them, it was just too much. Most of their data entry is done through imports AND they were looking at building a custom timesheet module with their in house developer. So the projects module wasn’t really for them, but they did want to track project income and outgoings at a basic level.
A few qualifiers before we start…this workaround does not:
- Track budgets
- Track timesheets or expenses
- Produce billing
- Allow creation of any kind of project structure
- Allow analysis against different project areas – it is purely at a project header level
- Appear in any Sage 200 Business Intelligence reports
- Integrate with the SOP and POP module
Nominal level Project Analysis
Few people know or use the transaction analysis codes. This is a field on every single nominal transaction that allows you to select a PRESET value against every line – which we are going to hijack for projects. When setting up it can appear on the nominal posting tabs of PL Invoices, PL Credit Notes, SL Invoices, SL Credit Notes, and Journals.
This means that you can track any postings to the nominal and assign them against a transaction analysis code or as we are going to call it a “Project”.
Setting up project tracking using transaction analysis codes
1) Enable transaction analysis codes first by going to Accounting system manager/system settings/transaction settings/use transactional analysis. You can also choose the name for the field…we are going to call it “Project”
2) Set up your project codes. You cannot set up a project on the fly, they must be preset. You do this by going to Accounting System Manager/Maintain Transaction Analysis Codes. Only “active” codes can be selected when entering transactions.
3) We now need to enable transaction analysis codes in each ledger including SL, PL, and NL.
PL – Go to PL/Utilities/Ledger Settings/Use transactional analysis
SL – Go to SL/Utilities/Ledger Settings/Use transactional analysis
NL – Go to NL/Utilities/Ledger Settings/Use transactional analysis
Reporting on projects using transaction analysis codes
By default, transaction analysis codes are not included as default within the nominal ledger reports so we have created a report that you can add to your system:
– Project Transaction Listing (filter by project)
To download this file simply fill out the form below and we will email it to you. If you are unsure on how to install reports, please see our free guide on ‘How to Add a Report to your Menu’, just click here.
If you would like more information on the full Sage 200 Project Accounting module then please see our dedicated page or give us a call on 0845 139 1300
We hope you have found this blog useful! What other workarounds would you like? Give us our next challenge by commenting below.
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