Software for a New Age

 
 
 
"The new controls for managing projects and delivering real time information to team members are invaluable.
I particularly like the way
it now links all stages from estimating to invoicing. That really helps with reporting."

Gillian Recas
Deputy General Manager
The Creative Unit Ltd
a subsidiary of Jamaica National Building Society

Product Overview

From simple jobs through to complex projects, once:fabrik features project management tools that reflect your business. Each Project can be arranged as one or more propositions. To offer your client an alternative proposal, simply create a new proposition. Each Proposition may contain any number of jobs. Each job may contain any number of components. Each Component may contain any number of Material and Resource Elements. These can be pre-planned using project plans.

A Bill of Material contains a list of physical elements required to create a component (e.g. paper, nuts and bolts, etc.). A Bill of Resources contains a list of human (e.g. staff and subcontract labour) resources and optionally, when Activities will be performed and when Events (milestones) are due.

The main difference between material and resource elements relates to their timing. While both may have a due date for provision/completion, resources also have a period allocated for their use or operation. e.g. four hours design time, eight hours of machine time.

Invoice Options:

For added flexibility, work can be billed at the project, job and component/sub-component levels.

Integrating with a general ledger

Some BPM systems include a back-end general ledger. Our approach has been to separate the accounting function. There are at least three good reasons for this:

  1. Most firms have accounting systems in place that they are happy with and want to avoid the disruption of changing accounting packages.
  2. From a user perspective, accounting software behaves differently in operation to ERP systems, particularly due to the need for audit trails. This tends to make integrated accounting/ERP systems far less user-friendly.
  3. Good accounting software is expensive to produce. It is more cost-effective to purchase a mainstream package that can be integrated with an ERP system.

Our strategy is to link to the accounting system by storing the same general ledger codes with all contacts, invoices, purchases, receipts, payments and time sheets.