Tracking Material Used on Projects

If you purchase material at the start of a project that spans several months or years, you may need to track how much material you have set aside for a project, how much of the material has been used to date, and the costs of materials both stored and used.

Project and Job Costing produces transactions that distinguish between stored and used material, and the resulting information is used for the AIA Report.

You use the Material Usage form, for example, to transfer the cost of material to a project. In Project and Job Costing, this material is considered “stored” until you allocate it for use on the project. When you post a material usage transaction, the program increases the actuals and the stored amount for the project, category, and resource, depending on the project type and accounting method (as for other types of transactions).

You can also assign material to a project by entering an Accounts Payable transaction or a cost transaction, or record the return of items to inventory using a Material Returns transaction.

You can use the Material Allocation form, available in the PJC Transactions folder, to reduce the stored amount as you use material for a project. (Note that material allocation transactions do not affect actuals, and they do not produce general ledger transactions.)

The Contract Maintenance form displays stored costs on the following tabs:

• The Totals tab on the Contract Maintenance form, proper, shows stored costs for a selected contract.

• The Totals tab on the Project Maintenance form shows stored costs for a selected project.

• The Material tab on the Project Maintenance form shows the stored quantities and stored costs for a selected project.

Material returns transactions also reduce stored quantities and costs.

All cost transactions posted for a material resource update the Stored amount in a contract, regardless of whether a transaction is billable, non-billable, or no charge. If you need to exclude non-billable and no-charge transactions, you could set up separate categories for non-billable or no-charge amounts. For example, you could set up Electrician, Electrician Non-Billable, and Electrician No Charge.