Your Options for Tracking Projects in Microsoft Dynamics

How are you Tracking Labor, Equipment & Material in the field?

Whether you’re installing telecom equipment, providing services in the energy services industry, or you’re a general professional services provider – tracking your time against projects in order to send daily invoices and tie to cashflow is critical. Our clients use several different Microsoft solutions to track time against projects. Today we’ll focus on two options, Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation and Dynamics NAV.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV is one of the most popular ERP systems in the marketplace and it has a very robust job (project) tracking capability. For many of our clients, tracking Labor, Equipment & Material (LEM’s) in the field provides them with a competitive advantage over their competitors. There is also Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations Business Edition, which is a younger sibling of Dynamics NAV. It has similar but less robust job/project tracking capabilities.

Strengths:

• Back Office/Operations/Accounting Integration
• Tracking the materials/inventory used in manufacturing from sourcing to consumption

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation provides tools for recording the labor, equipment, and material used on a project, as well as the ability to generate invoices. The key difference is the fact that Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation is built on a CRM platform, which allows a seamless integration into sales leads and opportunities, client interactions, and mobile field service capabilities.

Strengths:

• CRM Integration
• Mobile and Field Service Capabilities
• Quicker and less expensive implementations

Why not both?

If you’re setting up your systems from scratch, you’ll need to manage your customer life-cycle from the point you first meet, to successful execution and billing of a project. You have a number of options, including:

	CRM/Sales Management	Project Tracking	Billing/Accounting
1	Dynamics 365 for Sales	Dynamics 365 for PSA	Dynamics NAV
2	Dynamics 365 for Sales	Dynamics NAV	Dynamics NAV
3	Dynamics 365 for Sales	Dynamics 365 for PSA	Dynamics 365 for Financials
4	Dynamics 365 for Sales	Dynamics 365 for Financials	Dynamics 365 for Financials

 

You can approach tracking time against projects in many different ways with Microsoft Software. Your final solution will depend on many factors including your budget, timeline, customization requirements, and company maturity. Above, I presented your options in order of financial/timeline commitment, largest to smallest. If you need a hand weighing the pros and cons of each option, please feel free to contact us.

Summary

Several of our newest clients are using a financial system that meets their needs, but they required a better job tracking tool (often they were using Excel). In this case, Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation is a great fit. It can be implemented quickly (1-2 weeks) and for under $5000 in some cases. In this scenario, projects are managed and invoices are generated by Dynamics 365 for PSA. Receiving payment is then handled by your financial system.

While Dynamics NAV also has strong job/project tracking capabilities, it is a full ERP solution, so the implementation timeline is closer to 2-3 months and there will be a 50K+ price tag.

Once you’ve figured out how you want to use Dynamics to manage your project costs and accounting, you can start taking a look at Microsoft’s collaboration tools including Office 365 (Microsoft Teams, Planner, Yammer, and Tasks), Project Online, and more. The only limit is your imagination!