Whereas tactical benefits help you do day-to-day activities more easily and more effectively (e.g. get invoices out quicker), strategic benefits impact the health of your business (e.g. improve cash flow). They empower you to reduce cost, gain competitive advantage, improve customer satisfaction, boost employee morale, and increase productivity, revenue, and profitability. To understand the distinction more clearly, see a full list of five tactical benefits and 21 Strategic Benefits.

Don’t settle for mere tactical benefits. Have the vision to plan for and provide strategic value in a new system that raises your organization to the next level—so you don’t merely survive a business phase, but thrive in the marketplace. If you are project-centric, look for the strategic value you can derive from Job Cost Accounting Software in Microsoft Dynamics SL.

by Synergy Business Solutions, Microsoft Dynamics SL Gold Enterprise Partner on the West Coast

21 Strategic Benefits of Job Cost (Project) Accounting Software is a post from: ERP Software Blog

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1. Increase Productivity of Your Staff. Since Dynamics SL integrates with Microsoft Office (Excel, Outlook, Word) and Microsoft SharePoint, your team can increase productivity and you can realize a greater return on your job-project-management-accounting software investment. Non-accounting staff don’t have to know or use the accounting software to do what they need to do. Duplicate data entry is eliminated. Moreover, with Dynamics SL’s Business Portal, employees, partners, and even customers have secure, role-tailored access to up-to-date information in a browser, anytime and anywhere. You and your staff can also deliver project financial status, task assignments, billings, invoices, timesheets, expense reports, and other documents through a browser.This also means your accounting department isn’t pulling their hair out trying to meet a myriad of information requests from the field. In fact, these types of efficiencies led an independent researcher to conclude “Deployed properly, Dynamics SL can deliver payback in fewer than six months.”

 

2. Make Your Projects/Jobs More Profitable. Using the integrated features of Microsoft Dynamics SL project cost accounting software, you can gain control over revenue and expenses, allocate costs with a variety of labor rates, set up multiple billing methods, clearly view your budget details (actuals, revisions), and use this data to fine-tune future bids and improve estimating. This type of information obtained through easy-to-produce reports plus SL’s analysis tools leads to clearer insights that help you increase your margins and know with confidence that you can turn a nice profit on each job.

 

3. Improve Morale. With better overall understanding of business processes and ease of use throughout the company, employees feel better about the work they’re doing. They can ensure its accuracy and take pride in the outcome. Integration of applications ultimately makes their work easier and boosts company morale.

So next time you hear “that’s impossible,” think again. The integrated features of Microsoft Dynamics SL can give you the confidence to have that “can do” attitude and your company will thank you for it.

By Synergy Business Solutions, a West Coast Microsoft Dynamics SL Gold Partner.

Project Cost Accounting Software Integration in Microsoft Dynamics SL Makes (Practically) All Things Possible. is a post from: ERP Software Blog

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But another key part of the shift is what Elop referred to as “the cloud computing economic model.”  The key advantage of the cloud is making software more affordable for users like you. The magic of the cloud reduces costs, increases efficiency and creates convenience in the workplace. Considering some of us are still leery to make big investments with the recent economic conditions, cloud computing gives us more options on pricing and isn’t an enormous commitment, yet it enhances business just as an on premise solution would.

It sounds like Microsoft is on board for this transformative way of business. Elop mentions that although the lower costs sound like a negative for Microsoft, it really opens a door to a new market for Microsoft to be a part of and that is exciting.

If you’re interested in learning more about cloud computing options for your ERP Software Solutions, please contact us here at SSi Consulting. We are a Gold-Certified partner serving customers in the Mid-Atlantic area offering hosted Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Dynamics SL at very low monthly rates.Whether you need accounting software, job cost accounting, help with your wholesale/distribution supply chain, or business management solutions for non-profits, SSi is your total solution provider.

By:  Karen Riordan, SSi Consulting, Mid Atlantic Microsoft Partner

Cloud Computing Lowers the Cost of Microsoft Dynamics ERP is a post from: ERP Software Blog

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Jobs that involve intense labor might seem to generate more money, but you need to answer a few questions before you decide that all simple maintenance jobs are not as profitable as bigger jobs and therefore worth skipping:

1. How many laborers do I have, and how many hours per week do they work?

2. How many weeks per year do we actually work? (Not everyone works come fire or flood, so definitely take this into consideration!)

3. What is the company making now profit-wise, and what would I like for it to make?

For example: With 10 laborers working 40 hours per week at $12.00 per hour, your total expenditure, just in payroll, is $4800.00; this does not include health benefits or any extras like sponsored lunch. If your employees are working 38 weeks out of the year, then your yearly payroll expense will be $182,400. If you’ve never thought of it in such macro terms before, perhaps now is the time!

If the job is only going to be paying $600,000, then payroll is taking up almost 1/3 of your potential profit! At the end of the year, after all the costs are tallied, you might find out that you could have done with job with just seven guys and put an extra $54,720 in the bank. Hindsight is 20/20, but this obviously would be the worst time to find out. On a big job like this, you’re probably going to spend EVEN MORE on materials but also miscalculate how much you need because of the breadth of the project. Therefore, you should be sure to take a look at doing smaller maintenance jobs. There is a better chance that you’ll overpay in labor instead of materials.

Maintenance jobs are more structured and predictable in their needs for materials and laborers. The pool your one guy cleaned last month is not likely to have grown 20 feet in diameter by this month, so you know exactly how much equipment to send with this one guy to the job. With such routine, maintenance jobs can become very profitable–IF you track the man-hour rate for each job.

Working out this rate will help you achieve your desired profit margin. If you have this information before bidding, you can bid more accurate proposals. Remember though: this rate WILL NOT tell you which jobs make more money; rather, it is a tool to guide you towards bidding more accurately and preventing waste of labor and material.

A simple formula can get you started: Amount of man-hours to date divided by Gross Revenue from the job to date. This will equal the Actual Man-Hour Rate Per Job. Knowing this allows you to see the exact areas when the job becomes more profitable. For example, if one of your employees spends six hours landscaping and his Man-Hour Rate is $24.40, and another spends three hours planting and his Man-Hour Rate is $23.30, then you can see a marked difference. Even though Employee Two is only slightly cheaper than Man One, he is working less hours. Scheduling two planting jobs instead of one landscaping gig is obviously the more profitable route here.

Also, note that the phrase “to date” is included in the formula. In order to job cost effectively, you must do it continuously! This may seem tedious, but keeping up with these numbers allows you the surety that comes with knowing exactly how much materials and labor you will need for a job. If your spouse is making dinner and there’s a heap of leftovers and yet he or she STILL makes a big dinner again the next day, is this really a good thing to watch all that food go to waste? Poor planning ruins even the best events; your business is no different and deserves to be treated better than that.

In conclusion, take the guesswork out of your options. Sometimes big jobs will be more profitable, and sometimes small maintenance jobs will provide quick and easy money, but it’s up to you to figure up the job cost each and every time so that you don’t appropriate too much or too little of materials and time. Maintenance contracts often provide stability and even an expanded clientele base when word gets around that you’re doing such a great job keeping up the property or equipment. In most instances, the profit will be higher because you can accurately predict just how much labor and material to allocate to the property. In this case, hindsight does not have to be the only thing that is 20/20. Armed with good practices like job costing, project accounting and bookkeeping, you can have pretty decent foresight, too. Bigger is not always better.

by Jovaco, Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner serving Quebec, Canada

How to use Job Cost Accounting Software to Determine Which Projects Are Really Profitable is a post from: ERP Software Blog

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