Project sales enhancements

Enabled for	Public preview	General availability
End users by admins, makers, or analysts	Jun 1, 2020	To be announced

Feature details

We have combined the capabilities of Microsoft Project for Web and Dynamics 365 Project Service Automation with the Project financials capabilities in Dynamics 365 Finance as a single product offering called Dynamics 365 Project Operations. This will provide a comprehensive set of capabilities for project-based organizations.

The following additions to the existing functionality for project sales and financials are targeted for this release wave:

• Ability to set up split-billing for project contracts: With this feature, customers using the project-quoting and contracting capabilities of Project Operations will be able to set up multiple customers for each contract with a percentage split of the billings for each of those customers. This setup for billing will help in scenarios where there is a manufacturer or product vendor involved who is willing to pay a portion of the cost of a customized implementation or value-add, as required by the customer.

• Ability to set up "not-to-exceed" limits for project contracts and quotes and enforce them during invoicing: For time and material (T&M) project contract types, there is often a cap negotiated between the customer and the service provider (vendor) to prevent overages and inefficiencies in service delivery. With this feature, customers of Project Operations will be able to set up a cap or monetary limit on T&M project contracts that will be enforced by the system during invoicing.

• Ability to set up billing and chargeability options for work breakdown structure (WBS) tasks: In project organizations, it is common to have different contractual agreements for different phases of work. For example, a vendor could negotiate a fixed-price billing setup for the prototype phase of a project and a T&M type of arrangement for the actual implementation. Certain tasks on the project could also be categorized as chargeable while others could be non-chargeable or complimentary. With this feature, it will be possible for Project Operations customers to associate project tasks with project contract lines, thereby subjecting them to the same billing method on that contract line. The feature will also allow for a project manager to mark certain tasks as chargeable, non-chargeable, or complimentary, which will then be enforced when recording sales values and creating invoices for the costs incurred on those project tasks.

• Support for retainers on project contracts: Retainer-type contracts are those that will allow the customer to have a predictable cash outflow. The customer will have a standard monthly payment that will be used by the services provider to draw down against for the cost of services delivered in that period. Any services in that period in excess of the retainer will be invoiced at the end of that period or pushed to the next period's billings until the end of the project. With this feature, Project Operations customers will be able to draw up a contract with their customers that will have a set retainer schedule and retainer billings by period. These retainers will be used during invoicing to draw down against the cost of services delivered. This feature will also work to support advances and prepayments that represent one-off requests but can be used and reconciled much like a scheduled retainer payment.

• Project accounting and Financials in Dynamics 365 Project Operations: Fixed-price and time and material billing arrangements with customers for project-based contracts are often supported by one or more revenue recognition processes and accounting concepts for tracking project work-in-process (WIP) balances. Project Operations customers will be able to leverage the rich accounting and revenue recognition capabilities to complete their project management processes from sales to project accounting.