The Workamajig Way – Part 2, Accounting
Mike logged in as an employee in an accounting role:
1. Why metrics and why accounting? First, you some users prefer not to use two systems. Second, the project information lends guidance to the accounting function. You don’t want to pay vendor bills on a client that hasn’t paid their invoice.
2. G/L Tracking Options – can run p/l by class, department, offices.
WIP – is unbilled time and expense that you won’t to measure on a balance sheet, that you know you will bill at some point. WIP will ask you to categorize you unbilled transactions: Labor, other expenses (expense reports), media, production invoices. All classes of WIP will require asset/liability accounts and revenue/expense accounts. The process for labor is this:
a. get all time in the system
b. bill all of it that you can
c. leftover time will debit the assigned asset account, and credit the wip revenue account for labor
d. it then reverses out all wip that was billed during this period
NOTE: if you are a fixed-fee shop, you don’t want to track WIP because you are not governed by the time measurements. TIP*: If you want to track WIP but not include labor, simply enter the same account for all 3 categories of WIP within labor, and the debits and credits will cancel each other out.
The process for expenses work in the same way as labor.
For media and production work similarly.
Users now have the option to reverse the posting of WIP — this is a huge enhancement.
Posting WIP: Go to Accounting/Post WIP to G/L — You select a date range for transactions to post WIP. A line item is created for drill-down, and printing to review the transactions that make up the WIP totals. This is also where the option to unpost WIP can be found. The problem with this method is that you run the report at the end of the month. You may require more detailed information prior to that time period. You can run the Project Budget Analysis report to get the values of unbilled labor and expenses for all projects. This report is special because you can also have the option to drill down by project. TIP: when running reports in Workamajig, most reports have an option to “Modify”. This button allows you to change the layout, filters, etc. for the report you are running. Generally, you are able to use all available field from the information set used to generate the report. This upgrade is a huge advantage of Workamajig vs. Creative Manager Pro.
Advance billing: you need a ‘dummy’ invoice to send to the client. You specify (in control accounts) which account this will go to, typically a liability account. You do this to avoid recognizing revenue until it has been earned. Once the income has been earned you can create an invoice with the transactions and apply the advance billing to this invoice.
Pre-billing media: posting prebilled orders is going to debit the pre-specified Accrued Cost Account (in Control Accounts) and credit the Prebilled Accrual account. This allows you to properly recognize your expected expenses associated with your known media revenue. This entry is reversed when the actual media invoice arrives. What do you do when the invoice comes in over/under what was ordered and prebilled to the client? If the order was generated in the media module, you can add a revision line to the original order to adjust the amount to what was actually billed by the vendor.
Accounting: what do we envision for the accounting system? It should not be solely a function of the back office. It should effect everyone in the agency to maximize profits. On the purchasing side, you can opt to pay bills that have been billed and paid for by the client. Financial budgets can be created by copying other budgets or from scratch. They are typically created at the P/L level. You can do by specific client or all clients.