Describe project-based services and project types
Project Operations connects sales, resourcing, project management, and finance teams in a single application. This allows organizations to win more deals, accelerate project delivery, and maximize profitability.
Leaders get business insights to increase visibility across all teams, data, and processes, plus AI capabilities for better and faster business decisions.
The sales team is enabled to win more deals and accelerate the sales cycle with fast and accurate quotes, flexible pricing, and seamless transitions from estimate to execution.
Resourcing is set up to optimize resource use by aligning the right people, with the right skills, to the right projects. This resource optimization improves quality and helps retain top performers.
Project managers can accelerate project delivery with state-of-the-art, built-in project management that uses familiar, easy-to-use Microsoft Project capabilities.
Team members can improve productivity, collaboration, and visibility with integration to Microsoft Teams, and submit time and expenses from anywhere.
Finance can simplify project accounting with time and expense tracking governance, project costing, budgeting, invoicing, revenue recognition, compliance, and visibility into key business health metrics.
Project-based services
Project Operations is powerful on its own but it is expandable by our customers who require more capabilities from Dynamics 365. It can be expanded to include Marketing, Human Resources, and Customer Service. You can take advantage of the extra functionality of another Dynamics 365 application or of a custom application built with Power Apps. Everything works together and as you expect because the applications share the common foundation of a secure, private, and compliant cloud-delivered solution.
Project types
Project Operations supports different project types, each with a different purpose. The cost and revenue setup varies by project type.
The following provides details of different project types:
Time and material
In Time and material projects, the customer is billed for all costs that are incurred on a project based on unit pricing or markup on cost. These include costs for hours, expenses, items, and fees.
Fixed-price
The invoices for fixed-price projects consist of on-account transactions. These projects are invoiced according to a billing schedule that is based on a project contract. Revenue for a fixed-price project can be calculated and posted throughout the project by using the completed percentage method, or when the project is finished, by using the completed contract method. Companies can often benefit from using the value of the work in process (WIP) to calculate the degree of completion of a project or group of projects.
Investment
Investment projects are projects that don't produce immediate earnings. They're typically used for long-term internal projects in which the costs must be capitalized. The following are also true of investment projects:
Only costs for items, hours, and expenses can be recorded for an investment project.
Costs in an investment project are tracked and controlled by using the Estimate feature in the Project management and accounting section.
Investment projects can be set up with an optional maximum capitalization limit.
As an investment project progresses, you record its costs in WIP accounts, where the costs are held until the project is completed. When the project is eliminated, you transfer the WIP value to a fixed asset, a ledger account, or a new project.
Cost project
Like investment projects, cost projects are typically used to track internal projects. Only hours, expenses, and items can be recorded for cost projects. Cost projects are usually of shorter duration than investment projects. Unlike investment projects, cost projects can't be capitalized to balance sheet accounts. Instead, their project transactions are posted only to profit and loss accounts.
Internal
Internal projects are used to track costs on a project that is internal to your organization. This type of project can provide a planning tool to manage resource consumption.
Time project
Time projects are used to track time that is associated with nonchargeable and nonproductive activities, such as a project to track sick time for workers. Transactions in time projects aren't posted to the ledger. Instead, they're included in worker utilization reports.