Lesson 2: Advanced features

Overview

The learning doesn't stop after the completion of your first work cycle. As you continue, you'll learn new ways to work with the information provided by Ajera. Following are some of the more advanced features of Ajera.

Learning about multilevel time review

If you are a manager and your security settings give you access, you can use Ajera for multilevel time review. For example, you can view:

• Detailed time by employee for your projects
• Hours by date for each employee working on your projects
• Timesheet of each employee working on your projects

For more information, see this topic in help : Viewing project time.

Training your PMs on report reading

Ensure that your project manager’s security settings give them access to the reports they need. Some of these reports include:

• Snapshot
• Hours Distribution by Project
• Executive Summary
• Project Earnings
• Project Profit

For more information, see this topic in help : About reports.

Using billing review

unavailable in ajeraCore

Billing review is the approval process that occurs before a client invoice is billed.

In Ajera, you can create billing review stages to mirror the ones used at your firm. You use billing review stages to indicate where an invoice is in the review. You can set up billing review stages to notify the next reviewer that an invoice is ready. In this way, a client invoice can be passed from reviewer to reviewer within Ajera, with all the review notes and attachments linked to the invoice.

Learn how to set up and use billing review in Ajera and train your project managers in how to use it from the Project Command Center.

For more information, see this topic in help : About billing review.

Using earned value analysis

Earned value, also called spent, can be viewed as the cost of effort expended on a project if you are able to achieve your assigned billing rates.

Ajera uses the billing rate table to determine the earned value. In this way, the earned value can be unique to a project, phase, activity, employee, and employee type.

How does earned value affect the general ledger?

Ajera assigns the earned value when cost is incurred. For example, Ajera assigns labor an earned value when hours are entered on a timesheet. Ajera assigns an earned value for expenses and consultants entered in vendor invoices or in-house expenses. The amounts are reflected in your WIP and Unbilled Revenue accounts on the general ledger.

How is earned value reflected on accrual-basis financial reports?

When billable cost is entered in Ajera using Manage > Time & Expense, In-house Expenses, or Vendor Invoices, the earned amount is posted to your income accounts of Unbilled Labor, Expense, or Consultant Revenue. It is reflected on your profit and loss statement as revenue and on your balance sheet as an asset.

When the cost is included on a Final invoice, the earned amount is reversed from these accounts. This is true whether the cost is invoiced as Time & Expense or as part of a fee. And the billed amount is posted to Accounts Receivable and to your income accounts of Billed Labor, Expense, or Consultant Revenue.

What about earned value and cash basis?

With the cash accounting basis, revenue is not reported until you receive payment from the client for the work performed. When you enter the cash receipt, entries are made to the Cash and Revenue accounts. No accounting entries are made to the WIP, Unbilled Revenue (Earned), or Accounts Receivable account.

How is earned value reflected on project management reports?

The earned value, as it appears on project management reports, represents the total effort of time and expense at your billing rates. It accumulates to show you the potential revenue for the project. The earned value from project management reports does not tie out to the financial reports because the project value does not get relieved when invoiced.

Estimating projects

unavailable in ajeraCore

You can quickly produce accurate estimates and complete projects on time and within budget.

You can quickly estimate projects for proposals and later refine the estimates to working budgets and schedules after the contract is won. In addition, you have instant access to project-specific reports.

Here are some typical tasks that you may perform to guide your project from a proposal to a completed job:

• Set up the project.
• Begin the budget.
• Win the job.
• Manage the project.
• Review the client invoice.
• Close the project.

For more information, see this topic in help : About estimating and managing projects with Ajera.

Planning resources

unavailable in ajeraCore

You can specify the resources that are required for a project in several ways. You can start scheduling a project with unspecified resources or resources specified only by employee type. As the project progresses, you can change the resources to specify the exact names of employees with their hours or percentage of the workload. You do not need to fully schedule all work, so you can assign and manage only critical resources, if you want.

For more information, see this topic in help : Adding a resource.

Scheduling employees

unavailable in ajeraCore

In Ajera, project managers, department managers, and principals can use Schedule Manager to schedule employees on projects, manage schedules, and analyze project performance and employee workload. Employees can keep up-to-date on their own schedules, as well.

As a best practice, add employees to your projects in the Project Command Center, and then schedule those employees in Schedule Manager. That way, budgeted hours and dollars from the Project Command Center are available to guide you.

However, you can also add employees to projects in the Schedule Manager, but budgeted hours or dollars may not be available. In that case, you can go to the Project Command Center and enter the budgeted hours or dollars there.

As you schedule, and as time is entered to the project, Ajera updates the actual hours and dollars. This makes it easy to tell which projects are going over budget and which employees are underutilized or overutilized.

Because the scheduling does not affect billing, accounting, or contracts, you can easily change schedules as needed.

For more information, see this topic in help : About scheduling employees on projects.

Managing tasks

unavailable in ajeraCore

You can also add tasks when you want to track the individual to-do items that comprise the work needed to complete a phase or project.

When working with the project, the project manager can review the percent complete of each task, as reported by the employee assigned to the task. In this way, it is possible to arrive at a more accurate percent complete for the entire phase or project. It provides more meaningful information to manage projects as reflected by earned value analysis on the Project Progress report.

Because you use tasks to track the progress and scope of a project, you budget hours for a task but not cost amounts or rates. When using tasks, you continue to track project costs through resources and phases. However, you can choose to roll up task hours to resources or phases, which then updates cost amounts.

For more information, see this topic in help : About tasks.

Using Business Development

unavailable in ajeraCore

You can use Business Development to help you plan and manage potential new business. With Business Development:

• It’s all in one centralized location - the Project Command Center - where you can give your staff the level of access that’s right for them.
• You enter all the information you need for a potential project one time, and should you win the work, that information is ready for you to begin working on and billing the project.
• You can easily track the progress of a potential project every step of the way - from the lead to the final disposition.
• Your business development efforts become part of Ajera’s dynamic data engine, where reports and inquiries give you instant access to the analytics.

For more information, see this topic in help : About Business Development.

Optional phase: Additional services

The following services are optional in both Standard and Enterprise implementation plans:

• Advanced Inquiry, Financial Statement Designer, Client Invoice Designer
• Data validation
• Peripheral system integration (for example, NewForma, SharePoint, Microsoft Project)
• Multiple consultants

These services are included in Enterprise implementation plans but are optional in Standard implementation plans:

• Onsite consulting
• Business process restructuring
• Data cleansing in old system
• Government compliance consulting

Contact your Axium consultant if you have questions about any of these services.

Congratulations!

You've completed the Getting Started course.