Client: A high-end corporate turnkey interiors solution enterprise servicing clients in Bahrain and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia seeking project management software.

Use Case: Client has large-scale projects that run in multi-million cost and can take anytime from 1 to 4 years to complete. Client needed a project management software to track cost and profitability.

Primary Objective: Customize and deploy ERPNext to track each project cost, status, billing, inventory, variation and profitability through a project management software.

Client background

Client is one of the leading interior fit out company. The list of clients are some of the top A list companies. Project order value is usually in hundreds of thousands of Dinars/Riyals. To ensure the company has accurate project cost, status and billing they needed to move from Excel based costing to a project management software that would track every aspect of the project.

The Solution

We were tasked with customizing and deploying a project management software that would be simple to use yet will have strong controls over all purchases, billing and keep track of profitability.

Project Management App

The core ERPNext project management module was customized as per client needs. Every order is converted into project with its unique identity. User enters the order value and the estimated cost for completion of the project. Using the colorful green, orange and red indicators on next to project name user know if the project is on track against cost, better than estimated cost or worse. Next to the indicator the completion status of the project is displayed as a percentage.

Budget Table

Each project has a budget table which is to track item/service or purpose with its estimated cost. This forms the total budgets amount of the project. After filling up the table the total amount is compared to the order value.

Tasks

All tasks for completion of the project are pre-filled along with start and end date. Each task is assigned a status such as open, working, pending review, overdue, cancelled or closed. User updates the status as they worked on.

Costing and Billing

All purchases, expense claims journal entries and timesheets costing are loaded to the project. Each section is tracked through their documents and total added to the section.

Margins

Information from costing and billing section is summed up and compared to the order value. Management is able to quickly identify if any project is making or losing money.

Variation

There are bound to be variation to the estimated cost due to various reason like client asking for changes, purchase cost going up or delay in the project. Variation to the project is tracked through variation table. User adds description of variation and the cost. Variation cost is added by system to the overall billing.

Workflow

All project costing has to be approved by multiple people in the system to take effect. Due to the high order value variation of couple of percentage can have devastating impact on the profitability. Enhanced workflow was created for approval process wherein only after approval by multiple people will the project be initiated, cost approved or variation added. Regular user can only create documents in draft mode while senior managers have the authority to submit, cancel or amend the document.

Project Costing Report

The project costing report populates financial and task information. It a deep custom report to populate WIP, income recognized, estimated gross profit, actual gross profit, cost variation and payments collected from client. On the expense side all cost of goods, expense claims and sales person commission.

Based on cost variation result is populated by system as Favorable or Unfavorable

Project Closure

Various pre-defined setting does not allow to close a project without validation. Once all the criteria’s are satisfied then senior managers with authority can click on Close button to end the project.

The Result

It was a major change for the client to move from Excel based costing and tracking to a project management software. Multiple financial and process risks associated with manual methodology were eradicated in the system. Senior managers are able to get reports and when needed from project managed software. They are no longer dependent on employees for any information.

The financial reporting is accurate and new learning have been discovered by the user. After successful deployment in the Bahrain head office, the project management software was deployed for their branch company in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Each installation is independent of the other. Only a few important users have access to both project management software.

Overall, the project management software has been above customer expectation and is very happy with the return on investment into a project management ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software.