Features of Project Management
Features of Project Management
Oracle Project Management provides project managers a solution for maintaining control and visibility of all
aspects of their projects.
As a project manager, you can view project information at a single source point enabling you to track and
manage a project through the project lifecycle, from creating and planning, through to completion.
Using Oracle Project Management, you can:
Create, manage, version, and view workplan.
Track progress against the workplan.
Link Microsoft Project with Oracle Projects enabling you to work with a project using both applications.
Create budgets and forecasts to plan and manage the financial performance of projects throughout the project
lifecycle.
Track and monitor the performance of a project, and analyze financial and effort information by task, resource,
and time.
View exceptions for key financial and schedule metrics, and send automated status report notifications to key
project stakeholders.
Provide a timely and consistent view of project status information to all audience members and project
stakeholders.
Manage issues such as concerns, problems, and outstanding questions for projects and tasks.
Manage actions or changes that affect the scope, value, or duration of projects and tasks.
Attach and manage documents for projects and tasks.
Search and review the current financial status of projects and review detailed financial performance for projects
and tasks.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Can set up two types of structures in Oracle Projects: workplan structures and financial structures.
can track project status and performance by comparing project budget and forecast amounts to actual amounts
using Project Performance Reporting and Project Status Inquiry features.
Using budgeting and forecasting you can perform the following functions:
Maintain budget and forecast plan types
Create plan versions and enter amounts
Generate budgets and forecasts from staffing plans, workplans , and other financial plans
Enter plan amounts using Microsoft Excel and HTML
Enter plan amounts in multiple currencies
Maintain plan versions
Include change documents
View plan amounts
Setting Up Workplans
You can define workplans that meet the specific requirements of your various projects or project templates. You
can:
Set up basic starting information for a work breakdown structure, including the structure name, lifecycle,
current phase, and default display outline level.
Enable workplan versioning.
Enable work quantity planning and progress collection for a workplan and each of its tasks.
Automatically update the tasks' transaction dates.
Define approval options for the workplan (if versioning is enabled).
Select a planning resource list for the workplan.
Enable workplan cost tracking.
Enable multiple currency amount planning and define the list of transaction currencies used by your workplan.
Enable reporting of workplan cost amounts against a selected resource breakdown structure.
Determine whether resources assigned to the workplan use actual rates or planning rates for costing of planned
quantities. If you use planning rates you can define the planning rate schedules.
Period Definition
Periods are used to define project accounting periods (PA periods). PA periods are used in transaction
processing.
Calendar Definition
Calendars are used to determine resource availability and over commitment.
Organization Definition
Oracle Projects uses organizations for the following business purposes:
Management of projects and tasks
Employee assignments
Expenditure entry
Nonlabor resource ownership
Budget management
Resource definition for project status reporting
Burden cost processing
Invoice and collections processing
Reporting
Forecasting
Resource Definition
A single collection of your resources, their skill sets, and their availability enables you to
utilize and manage your resources both effectively and efficiently.
Organization Forecasting
Organization forecasting enables you to generate organizationlevel financial forecasts for the
revenue, cost, margin, margin percent, utilization, and headcount amounts associated with your
projectlevel staffing plans.
Oracle Project Costing provides an integrated cost management solution for all projects and activities
within an enterprise. Oracle Project Costing acts as a central repository for transactions, processes
project costs, and creates corresponding accounting entries to satisfy corporate finance requirements.
When you use Oracle Project Costing, you can track and account for all project costs. You can also
control payment on supplier invoices using the Supplier workbench. Costs may be entered directly into
Oracle Project Costing using expenditure batches, imported from other Oracle Applications, or imported
from external systems. You collect cost distribution lines in Oracle Project Costing which uses
AutoAccounting to determine the default accounts for raw and burden costs. Oracle Project Costing also
creates cost accounting events for Oracle Subledger Accounting, and transfers the accounting entries to
Oracle General Ledger.
Cross Charge
A cross charge takes place when an expenditure items expenditure organization is different from the task
owning organization of the task being charged. These organizations are called the provider and receiver
organizations. The organizations can be within the same operating unit or belong to different operating units.
Burdening
Burden costs are costs of doing business that support raw costs.
Project Allocations
The allocations feature in Oracle Project Costing can distribute amounts between and within projects
and tasks, or to projects in other organizational units.
Supplier Payment Control
The Supplier Payment Control feature in Oracle Project Costing enables you to integrate with Oracle
Purchasing and Oracle Payables to create supplier invoices with automatic payment hold for purchase
orders with Pay When Paid payment terms and a deliverables schedule. On interface of these supplier
invoices from Oracle Payables to Oracle Projects as expenditure items, the supplier invoices are linked
to draft customer invoices generated on these expenditure items. If you enable projects for automatic
release of pay when paid holds and for AR Receipt Notification, the Release Pay When Paid concurrent
program checks for receipts applied to linked customer invoices in Oracle Receivables and releases the
hold on the corresponding supplier invoice. You can manually link and unlink supplier and customer
invoices and release holds from the Supplier Workbench.
Oracle Project Management provides project managers the visibility and control they need to deliver
their projects successfully, improve profitability, and operate more efficiently. It presents project
managers with a comprehensive integration of the major elements of project management: programs,
plans, progress, issues, changes, documents, effort and cost, financial information, performance,
exceptions, and status reports.
Workplan and Progress Management
You can set up two types of structures in Oracle Projects: workplan structures and financial structures.
A structure is sometimes referred to as a work breakdown structure, or WBS. A workplan contains a
hierarchical organization of tasks within a project. Each workplan contains an unlimited number of tasks
and you can define as many levels as you want. Workplan management helps project managers and
team members deliver projects on time. Financial structures help project and financial administrations
track financial information for a project.
You can collect progress for deliverables, task resource assignments, tasks, and projects. This
information allows you to report on whether workplan execution is on track.
Integration with Microsoft Project
You can continue to use Microsoft Project when working with your projects, while benefiting from the
features that Oracle Projects has to offer. You can send and receive a project, send an update, view realtime project information, and receive real-time values for task attributes. You can use Microsoft Project
to update the project schedule, progress, and budget information.
After all project details have been entered, you can then send the project plan to a workplan or financial
structure.
Budgeting and Forecasting
You can create budgets and forecasts to manage the financial performance of a project throughout the
project lifecycle. You can also create multiple budgets and forecasts for a project to demonstrate
different scenarios. You can compare budget and forecast amounts to project actuals using reporting
tools such as Project Performance Reporting and Project Status Inquiry to track project status and
performance.
This slide describes the integration of Oracle Projects with Oracle Assets. The graphic on the slide depicts how
you can use a project to build a new asset or retire an existing asset, collect costs and interface these costs to
Oracle Assets to calculate depreciation for a new asset and retirement costs for an existing asset.
Oracle Projects allows you to manage asset capitalization using capital projects. In a capital project, you can
collect constructioninprocess (CIP) and expense costs for each asset you are building. You can also define
retirement adjustment assets and capture cost of removal and proceeds of sale amounts (retirement work in
process, or RWIP) for assets you are retiring. You use Oracle Projects to collect all asset cost detail transactions,
summarize them to create asset lines in Oracle Projects, and transfer them to Oracle Assets to become
depreciable fixed assets. Oracle Assets integration includes:
Inquiry of project information on mass addition lines.
Drilldown to project asset line details in Oracle Projects from projectrelated mass addition lines in Oracle
Assets.
Copying of project information from mass addition lines to asset source lines during Mass Additions Posting
process.
Inquiry of project information on asset source lines.
Drilldown to project asset line details from projectrelated asset source lines.
Coordination with Oracle Payables so that supplier invoice lines are not interfaced to Oracle Assets by both
Oracle Payables and Oracle Projects when the invoice line is associated with a capital project.
This slide describes the integration of Oracle Projects with Oracle Cash Management. The graphic on
the slide depicts how you can use Oracle Cash Management to control the flow of cash coming into a
project from budgets, events, and customer payments as well as the cash going out the project as
supplier payments, project expenditure, and overhead costs.
Cash Forecasting in Oracle Cash Management captures cash flow information from Oracle Projects. It
also captures cash flow information from these other Oracle applications that store projectrelated
information: Oracle Purchasing, Oracle Receivables, Oracle Order Management (with Oracle Project
Manufacturing), and Oracle Payables.
By integrating Oracle Projects with Oracle Cash Forecasting, you can define and generate a cash
forecast for a specific project. You can report on cash flows from Oracle Projects sources throughout
your enterprise, and across organizations as needed. You are also able to forecast in any currency, and
analyze your projects currency exposure by forecasting transactions that are entered in a particular
currency.
This slide describes the integration of Oracle Projects with Oracle General Ledger. The graphic on the slide
depicts the process of project accounting first as accounting events in Oracle Subledger Accounting that are
interfaced to Oracle General Ledger as journal entries. Oracle Projects integrates with Oracle General Ledger via
Oracle Subledger Accounting and enables you to update your general ledger with Oracle Projects activity. You
can generate accounting events at any time and as often during an accounting period as you want. Oracle
Subledger Accounting uses the accounting events to generate the accounting and transfers the final accounting
to an Oracle General Ledger interface table.
This slide describes the integration of Oracle Projects with Oracle General Ledger for project budgets. The
graphic on the slide depicts the kind of accounting entries created for baseline project budgets in Oracle General
Ledger; budget journal entries for bottom-up budgets and encumbrance journal entries for top-down budgets.
Oracle Projects budget integration enables you to integrate project budgets with non-project budgets.
This slide describes the integration of Oracle Projects with Oracle Grants Accounting. The graphic on
the slide depicts how you can use awards to fund projects that manage the activities of grant-receiving
organizations.
Oracle Grants Accounting extends the functionality of Oracle Projects to provide an award and project
management solution for grant receiving organizations. Grants Accounting enables you to track multifunded projects and the required compliance terms and conditions by award.
Oracle Grants Accounting supports the validation of allowable costs and effective dates, as well as
budgetary controls, to ensure compliance. Features that are part of Oracle Grants Accounting include:
Multifunded projects
Award management
Funds control by award
Award Status Inquiry
Government reporting
Integration with Oracle Financials
Integration with Oracle Labor Distribution
Integration with Oracle Grants Proposal
Oracle Inventory
This slide describes the integration of Oracle Projects with Oracle Inventory. The graphic on the slide
depicts how you can enter issues and receipts for a project in Oracle Inventory to collect and process
costs and then import these costs back into the project as expenditures.
In a non-manufacturing environment, you enter issues and receipts into Oracle Inventory. After you
process costs, these transactions become costed transactions. Next, run the Cost Collector.
You can initiate the Cost Collector from the Project Cost Transfers window in Oracle Inventory to
collect and then transfer costs to Oracle Projects. Next, in Oracle Projects, run the program PRC:
Transaction Import to create expenditures in Oracle Projects. If the import program rejects any
transactions, then you can review and correct them using the Review Transactions window. After you
correct the transactions, resubmit the PRC: Transaction Import program. The program imports the
transactions into Oracle Project Costing as accounted and costed. You cannot modify the cost
distribution lines in Oracle Project Costing.
This slide describes the integration of Oracle Projects with Oracle Payables for accrual basis accounting
of supplier costs on a project. The graphic on the slide depicts how you can create the supplier invoices
on a project in Oracle Payables and interface accruals, invoice distributions, and discounts as supplier
costs back to the project as expenditures.
When the primary accounting method is accrual basis accounting, you interface perpetual receipt
accruals, invoice variances, invoice distributions, and payment discounts to Oracle Project Costing as
actual costs.
Matching Invoices
If you use Oracle Purchasing and have already associated project-related information to a purchase
order, and you are matching an invoice to a purchase order or receipt using the Invoices windows
instead of manually creating invoice lines and distributions, Oracle Payables automatically copies the
project information from the purchase order to the invoice. You cannot change the project information
that is copied from the purchase order to the invoice, with the exception of the expenditure item date.
Oracle Payables uses the profile
option PA: Default Expenditure Item Date for Supplier Cost during the invoice match process to
determine the default expenditure item date for supplier invoice distribution lines. You can override the
default expenditure item date for invoice distribution lines on the Invoice Workbench in Oracle
Payables.
Entering Invoices
You can enter project-related invoices directly in the Invoices windows in Oracle Payables.
You can enter project-related information at the invoice level, which populates the project related
information at the invoice line level. You can override these default values at the invoice line level. If
you choose not to automatically generate the distributions for an invoice line, you can enter projectrelated information in the Distributions window. An invoice can have both project-related and nonproject-related distributions.
Importing Invoices
You can import through the Payables Open Interface tables projects-related invoices from the Invoice
Gateway and other systems. For example, import expense report invoices from Oracle Internet
Expenses.
You can also import invoices from third party systems if the invoices are accounted.
Tracking Commitments
You can track project-related invoices as commitments in Oracle Project Costing before you interface
them as actual costs.
Posting Invoices
If you use accrual basis accounting, then you must validate the invoice and create Subledger accounting
for it in final mode in Oracle Payables, before you can interface the invoice to Oracle Project Costing.
This slide describes the integration of Oracle Projects with Oracle Payables for cash basis accounting of
supplier costs on a project. The graphic on the slide depicts how you can create the supplier invoices on
a project in Oracle Payables, release payment, and interface these supplier costs back to the project as
expenditures.
When the primary accounting method in Oracle Payables is cash basis accounting, you interface
payments to Oracle Projects as actual costs. You cannot interface costs from Oracle Payables to Oracle
Projects as actual costs until you pay the invoice. After you enter payments for a supplier invoice, you
interface the costs to Oracle Projects as actual costs. You can interface partially paid invoices to Oracle
Projects.
Entering Invoices
As with accrual basis accounting, you can match invoices to purchasing documents, manually enter a
supplier invoice, and import supplier invoices from an external source.
Tracking Commitments
You can track project-related invoices as commitments in Oracle Project Costing.
Oracle Purchasing
This slide describes the integration of Oracle Projects with Oracle Purchasing and Oracle iProcurement. The
graphic on the slide depicts how you use Oracle iProcurement and Oracle Purchasing to raise requisitions and
purchase orders for a project, calculate the cost, and interface this cost back to Oracle Projects as project
expenditures.
When you enter project-related transactions in Oracle Purchasing and Oracle iProcurement, you only need to
enter project information on the source document -- either the requisition or the purchase order. When you
automatically create purchase orders from requisitions using Oracle Purchasing AutoCreate feature, Oracle
Purchasing automatically copies the project information from the requisition to the purchase order.
Entering Requisitions
You enter project-related purchase requisitions using the Requisitions window in Oracle Purchasing. You can
enter default project information in the Project Information tabbed region of the Requisitions Preferences
window. Oracle Purchasing uses this default information to populate the requisition distribution lines you create
during your current session. The requisitions distribution line has a Project tabbed region for you to enter
project-related information. A requisition can have a combination of project-related and non-project-related
distribution lines. In addition, you can use the Buyer WorkCenter in Oracle Purchasing to review requisitions.
You can also use Oracle iProcurement to enter project-related purchase requisitions. You can enter default
project information in the iProcurement Preferences page. Oracle iProcurement saves this default information
and uses it to populate the billing information when you check out.
Using AutoCreate
When you automatically create purchase orders from project-related requisitions in the AutoCreate Documents
window, Oracle Purchasing copies the project information and the accounting information from the requisition
to the purchase order. You do not need to enter any additional project-related information on your purchase
order when you use this feature.
You can change the project information on the purchase order that was copied from the requisition; the project
information on the requisition is not updated.
Entering Releases
You enter project-related releases against blanket purchase agreements and planned purchase orders using the
Enter Releases window in Oracle Purchasing. When you use this window, you specify if the release distribution
line is project-related. If it is project-related, you continue to enter project information for the line.
You perform the following steps to set up your Oracle Applications ledger and assign it to a responsibility:
Define a chart of accounts
Define an accounting calendar
Enable currencies
Define a subledger accounting method
Define a ledger
Assign ledger to a responsibility using the GL: Ledger Name profile option
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A chart of accounts enables you to define the account structure for your organization that consists of the
number of account segments, their length, name, and order.
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Defining Organizations
To control how an organization is used in Oracle Projects, you enable one or more of the following Organization
Classifications.
Business Group
A business group is the largest organizational unit you can define to represent your enterprise.
A business group may correspond to a company or corporation, or in large enterprises, to a holding or parent
company or corporation.
Operating Unit
An operating unit is used to partition data for a subledger product. Organization classifications involving
financial transactions (such as expenditure/event organizations and project invoice collection organizations) are
always associated with operating units. Accounting combinations involved in project transactions depend on the
current Operating Unit, which in turn is associated with a specific ledger.
HR Organization
Any organization that has the HR Organization classification enabled can have employees assigned to it.
You may use the Additional Information section to restrict the project classes (indirect, capital, contract) of the
projects that an organization may own.
Interface Revenue to GL
If you want to interface revenue to Oracle General Ledger, you need to enable the system option for
revenue interface. When you enable the interface revenue option, Oracle Projects generates revenue
accounting events and creates accounting for the accounting events in Oracle Subledger Accounting.
Oracle Subledger Accounting is an intermediate step in the revenue accounting flow between Oracle
Projects and Oracle General Ledger. Oracle Subledger Accounting transfers the accounting entries to
Oracle General Ledger. If you disable the check box, Oracle Projects does not generate revenue
accounting events and hence you cannot create accounting and transfer revenue to Oracle General
Ledger.
Invoice Numbering Method
You specify whether you want Oracle Projects to number invoices automatically, or whether you plan to
enter invoice numbers manually.
Invoice Numbering Type
If you select Manual invoice numbering, you indicate whether you will use alphanumeric or numeric
invoice numbers.
If you select Automatic invoice numbering, Oracle Projects uses numeric numbering. You will have to
specify a starting invoice number. In a multiple organization installation, invoice numbers are unique
within an operating unit, not across operating units (unlike project numbers). If automatic invoice
numbering method is selected, the next invoice
number is operating unitspecific.
Centralized Invoice Processing
By default, the Centralized Invoice Processing check box is enabled. If you want all of the
project invoices for the operating unit to be processed using the Oracle Projects seeded
transaction types in Oracle Receivables, leave the Centralized Invoice Processing check box
enabled. With decentralized invoicing, you allow organizations to process their own invoice
collections.
Invoice Batch Source
You need to specify an invoice batch source in Oracle Projects before you can interface
invoices to Oracle Receivables.
Customer Relationships
Specify a value for the Customer Relationships field. The default value is No. You can change
the option any time, but the change impacts only future customers and invoices.
Yes: You can choose a Bill To and Ship To customer based on the project customer or a
related customer defined in Oracle Receivables.
No: You can choose a Bill to and Ship to customer of the project customer only.
All: You can choose a Bill To and Ship To customer from any customer defined in Oracle
Receivables.
Sales Credit Type
You use the Sales Credit Type to interface sales credit information to Oracle Receivables for
project invoices. Select the Sales Credit Type to specify the type of credit you want to allocate
to salespersons in Oracle Receivables for project invoices. If there is no credit receiver defined
at the project level and Allow Sales Credit is enabled for the Invoice Batch Source, your
project invoices will interface to receivables with the selected Sales Credit Type with the
project manager as the default credit receiver.
Enable Multi Currency Billing
Enable this option to enter agreements, rate schedules, and add billing assignments to the
project type in any currency.
Require Rate and Discount Reason
Enable this option to require a reason for a rate or discount overrides to the bill rate schedules.
Allow Bill Rate Override
Enable this option if you want to be able to override bill rates for all the projects in the
operating unit.
Allow Bill Rate Discount Override
Enable this option if you want to be able to override the bill rate discount for all the projects in the
operating unit.