Access Costing

Gain complete project control

Access Costing is designed to handle the complex requirements of heavily project-based companies, such as engineers, consultants, publishers, architects and advertising agencies.  But because this module is updated automatically by every
other part of the Dimensions system, there is almost no limit to the range of business activities it can be used to control.  Departmental budgets, promotional campaigns, telephone costs and P11D expenses are just some of the areas you can
target.

 

Project Costing Information at a Glance

Each project record holds a huge amount of information, from start and finish dates to actual costs, committed costs and cash flow.  You can see your total exposure at any given time, with P&L reports based on commitments or cash flow. Individual projects can be analysed over an unlimited number of cost centres, using a hierarchical structure up to 10 levels deep, and viewed from Microsoft Project for further analysis and manipulation. 

 

Compulsory Costing
Tighten your grip on projects and budgets even further, using the compulsory costing feature. You can choose to apply costing controls across the entire system, in which case every selected transaction type (including sales and purchase orders, stock movements and VAT journals) must be updated to a specific project or projects. Alternatively, you can limit compulsory costing to
specific analysis codes.  In either case, allocation is carried out on a line by line basis.

Invoice Out of Costing
Sales invoices can be generated from within the costing system, based upon the cost transactions posted to each job, project and cost centre. Costs can be sorted using a variety of methods (date, type and so on) and compiled into a single invoice covering numerous different projects. You have complete control over the final invoiced value and the amount of information displayed,
making project invoicing easier than ever before.

WIP
Accurate tracking of work in progress can make the difference between profit and loss.  When cost transactions are converted into sales invoices, they automatically update work in progress for the project. Cost transactions that cannot be invoiced are removed from work in progress, to be analysed as extra or unrecoverable costs.

Time Sheets
Timesheets can be entered using a range of different formats.  They can even be submitted directly by staff working off-site, using standard e-mail and electronic messaging (XML).  The system calculates staff productivity, tracks lost man-hours and enables time costs to be uplifted to reflect overhead recovery or profit for recharge to clients.

Payroll Link
Within Costing, time sheets look up labour rates directly from Access Payroll, streamlining the booking and analysis of elements such as basic rate and overtime. There is no limit to the number of pay rates that can be assigned to each employee. Access Payroll calculates deductions, prints payslips, and provides the option to book Employers' National Insurance to the relevant project cost centres.

 

Flexible Reports

The Costing module contains a comprehensive range of search, sort and subtotalling facilities. Multiple jobs can be consolidated by common data (for example, contract number), and you can single out an individual cost centre or resource and report on it for multiple projects.