Macola Project Module

[kismert]

Our company needs to get a better handle on its long-term production processes, and needs detailed, real-time reporting on a per-project basis.

So, I've been asked to get a project management package working for our Macola ES installation.

Looking at help files, it seems our Macola Project Module only provides only basic functionality.

What we are looking for is a much more comprehensive reporting package, which would summarize revenues and expenditures in comparison to budget by project, with grand summaries for all projects.

We need to look at both professional and shop hours, material costs, POs, outstanding POs, and other project expenses. We want to be able to do Work In Progress or Percentage of Completion related billing off of this data.

Am I overlooking functionality that is already built-in? Or, is there some additional package out there that would provide the bulk of what we are looking for?

Thanks,
-Ken

[jaythegeek]

Ken,

Your questions sound very similar to a project that I have implemented this past year.

Our challenge was a contracting company, all revenue and expenses tracked per project. Expense were broken down into four different categories (Purchases, Stock Materials, Subcontractor & Labour). We do comparisons against budgets at a very high level (total revenue and total expenses), and a fairly crude percent of completion calculation.

My findings and strategy were based on two simple facts. First, Macola ES does allow the 'Project' code to be specified on almost every transaction detail screen. Second, while the built in project reporting was minimal, I was quite comfortable building SQL queries and Crystal reports to satisfy the business needs of the company. There are really only two reports that we use for this project management, and a couple other exception reports that I have created for administration.

The resulting system is quite rigid, they must follow strict procedures to ensure everything works as designed. This means there is a great deal of Macola functionality that is not being used. We are a few months into it, and things seem to be working well.

If you are planning to attend Engage in Orlando, I would be happy to sit down with you and share what I have done. I am sure it will seem quite basic. However there may be a few tricks that you can put to good use.

Regards,

Jay

[wils195480]

Jay - I am very interested to learn more about how you have customized Macola to report more information on a project basis. I am learning SQL and Crystal as I go along. We are a manufacturer of precast concrete structures. The first question I have is on the AR Aging, I figured out how to add a group under each customer for the project. Problem is when the Summarize button is checked, I need it to summarize the individual projects under each customer. Any ideas?