For many Project-based organisations, there is a requirement to manually accrue costs, as part of month-end process, where the costs are of a nature which is not directly from a system document (e.g. Insurances) or where timing of costs means it has not made it to the system.

Mostly what is required is for the cost to be posted in the period concerned and reversed out of the next period. 

Functionality required:

The request is to provide the ability to manually enter the accrual after running a report which presents the current cost position. 

I'm suggesting the Cost Control form is extended as follows (When 'Show by' is set to Category):

• On the GENERAL tab, introduce a  new ACCRUAL column between the COMMITTED COSTS and VARIANCE columns
  
  
  
  • All the current parameters on the Cost Control form will stay the same.
  
  
  • Each cell in the Accrual column will provide fields for user entry of amounts to accrue
  
  
  • When the Cost Control form is run and the numbers are displayed in the various columns (with the exception of the ACCRUAL column)  within the General tab, the user should be able to then manually populate the new column's fields with any amount that is to be accrued.
  
  
  • The user should be able to then click on CALCULATE option again and see the Variance column changes, based on the entered Accruals and any Actual Costs already showing in the 'Actual Cost' column. 
  
  
  • The user should then be able to Post the Accruals. 
  
  
  • The Post action will use the details from the PARAMETERS tab (Accruals field group) set by the  user using each of the Categories Post a reversing Journal. 
    
    
    
    • Categories for Hour should post a reversal Hour Journal
    
    
    • Categories for Expense should post a reversal GL Journal to the project coded to that category
    
    
    • Categories for Item should post a reversing item journal. (Currently there is no reversing journal for item...this can be designed as part of this modification or simply the journal could initiate 2 journals one with a +ve and other with a -ve quantity and reversal date)
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Each transaction originating from an Accrual Posting should be marked on it's equivalent Project Transactions table with an 'Is Accrual' flag in the background. (This will give the ability to pull the transactions to different reports/forms where there is a requirement to show accruals in a separate column. 
  
  
  
  

The PARAMETERS tab (

• This will hold the following information to be set by the user
  
  
  
  • Reversing date:- (The date which will be used for the reversal Posting for all lines)
  
  
  • Summary Accrual (Read only on the Parameters tab, to be inherited by the Project group)
  
  
  • Summary Accrual category (Read only on the parameters tab, to be inherited by the Project group)
  
  
  • Accrual Amount:- Only enabled when 'Summary Accrual' is ticked.  Will hold a single accrual amount, if the accrual is required at a project level, rather than detailed level for each category. 
  
  
  
  

Project Group Parameters for Accrual

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  • Summary Accrual  [Checkbox] - When ticked, the Summary Accrual category (Below) will be enabled for the selecting of an Expense Category.  
  
  
  • Summary Accrual category -  The selected category will be used for posting a single amount, as an overall accrual, rather than posting 
  
  
  
  

NOTE: Running the Cost Control enquiry with 'show by' set to 'Cost template' should present the Accruals column in the same same column as above but make it read-only and reportable, so that it will pull all the accrual information already posted against the project in this column (based on the flag which was set to 'Is Accrual' when the accruals was posted).