Is there a way to have an integration between Job Cost and A/P that would alert me when entering a new vendor invoice in AP - that the additional dollar amount puts the actual job cost over the estimated cost?

Thanks,
Karen

Hi Karen,

The short answer is "no", but I'm curious...

Once you'd been alerted that this invoice would put you over the estimate, what action would you take?

Hi Karen,

Unfortuneately there is no warning messages in AP that the invoice amount associated with a job will make the total incurred costs exceed the estimated cost. There aren't any warnings of this type within Payables.

We can forward this request to development.

Hi Andrew,

The first action would be to question "why". All of our jobs are based on estimated costs, and if the actual cost of material, freight or installation exceeds our budget, our profit and margins become lower.

If a warning is issued, my first step would be to insure the invoice is being applied to the correct job. Identifying mistakes like this BEFORE entering would be so much less time consuming than recognizing them after the invoice is posted.
Second step could be contacting the vendor to check the cost.
Several other things come to mind before saying okay, sales staff made an error and we have to "eat it".

It would be very useful for us, and thanks for takinig the time to question my reasons.

Karen

Hi Karen

Purchase Orders for Adagio, which integrates with both Adagio AP and Adagio JC, has this feature. I have sold it to one client strictly for this one feature! It actually alerts you not when you enter the invoice, but when you issue the PO, which is even better. If you don't issue you a PO, you can enter the invoice directly as a "quick receipt", and I believe it will alert you there as well.

Now that I wrote all of that, I am hoping it is correct, because in truth it was Inventory Receipts (the DOS version of POA) that I sold in this case. Check with the folks at The Stief Group to confirm that it is also true for POA (www.stiefgroup.com)

Regards

Steve Schwartz
steve@sschwartcpa.com

Hi Karen,

Thanks for providing a little more insight. My thought was that you would end up posting the invoice anyway, and that a GridView View could be open on your desktop to alert you when any Job went over its estimate (once the batch was posted to JobCost).

The point about posting an invoice to the wrong job is well made. Is there anything that we could do to the data entry that might minimize this type of error?

In Order Entry, there is a check of order amount against credit limit less current balance, and the user is alerted if the order will exceed the credit limit.

Similarly, if the total job costs expensed plus the current expense exceeds the current estimated costs for the Job number entered, the user could be alerted to the discrepancy.

Hi Kate Spontak,

Good analogy. Thanks.