If one of the hats you wear at work is that of a project manager, you know how frustrating it can sometimes be to tie together all of the details involved in a single project. You have assets to purchase and allocate, employee time sheets to approve and assign to the project, client invoices to send and emails to send to make sure that all participants are kept in the loop. Traditionally, this has meant opening and closing a half-dozen applications. All that has changed with the advent of Microsoft’s new product, Dynamics 365 Business Central.
What is Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central?
Dynamics 365 Business Central is a Microsoft product launched in March, 2018, that offers a more advanced, comprehensive, cloud-based management solution that allows businesses to use a single program to manage their finances, sales projections, and customer service and client orders. It does this without making the customer learn new skills, integrating already familiar programs like Excel, Outlook and Word. We recently hosted a webinar about this exciting new technology.
What we like about Business Dynamics 365 Central
One of the first things you’ll notice about this new product is that it’s accessible on any Internet-enabled device. Since it is cloud-based, your data isn’t stored on any one machine or server and is thus available on your laptop, home PC, tablet and iPhone.
We also love the way you can work on a variety of projects and task without having to log in and out of different programs and how you can allocate time sheets and assets to different projects as you go. You can even send invoices directly from the project dashboard. Yet another thing we like about Business Central is how the product makes it very simple and painless to share information among internal and even external partners, easing the collaboration process.
Project Management and Accounting in Dynamics 365 Business Central
Dynamics 365 Business Central has a lot to offer project managers. To create a project, you simply log in as a project manager and click the “start” button. (If you do similar projects over and over again, you also have the option to copy information from a previous project.) Once your project is created, you can assign a project number and list the tasks that need to be done to complete the project. You can then list the supplies you’ll need for the project and allocate them from your inventory, if applicable.
When employees work on a project, they can log into the project via Dynamics 365 Business Central. The software tracks the hours spent on the project and sends the manager a time card to approve. Once approved, that labor cost is assigned to the project and will be included in the total cost.
There are a number of ways you can track your project’s work in progress with Business Central. You can select cost value, sales value or percentage complete. When it’s time to invoice your customer, Business Central makes that easy, too. You simply create a job invoice, open your email account directly in Business Central and hit send. The correspondence will be attached to the project and visible when you open the project.
To learn more about making technology work for you and your business, visit crestwood.com or contact us today at sales@crestwood.com.
