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Stop Project Budget Overruns in Acumatica

This page explains how a custom solution addresses the challenges of project budget management in Acumatica, offering a robust solution with significant benefits.

(a) Challenges

  • Acumatica’s built-in budget checks have limitations: While Acumatica provides warnings about potential budget overruns on purchase orders, it doesn’t prevent users from proceeding, which can lead to accidental overspending. These warnings can be ignored, and users can still push through the purchase order, resulting in project delays, cost overruns and strained client relationships.
  • Lack of Enforceability: The core issue is that Acumatica’s budget checks are not enforceable. The system will warn you if you’re about to exceed your budget on a purchase order, but it doesn’t stop you from saving. This lack of a hard stop allows for accidental overspending, undermining the purpose of budget tracking.
  • Granularity of Budget Tracking: The existing system may not provide enough detailed budget checking on a per-line item basis, and may not include specific task, cost code, or account group budget limitations.

(b) Solution

  • Custom Solution by Deepak: An Acumatica expert named Deepak developed a custom solution to address these issues by creating a checkpoint before any data is saved. He did this by overriding the persist method, which is triggered when the user hits save on a PO.
  • Intercepting the Save Function: Deepak’s solution intercepts the save function of Acumatica using a custom function called “check project budget exceeded”. This custom function acts like a bouncer, checking if any purchase order exceeds the allocated budget.
  • Granular Budget Checks: This function compares each line on your purchase order with the allocated budget, checking not just the overall project budget but also budgets specific to the task, cost code, and account group. This provides a granular level of control, preventing overspending at all levels of the project.
  • Enforced Budget Limits: If any line on the purchase order exceeds the allocated budget, the custom function throws an error message and stops the user from saving the purchase order. This makes budget enforcement a reality by preventing users from accidentally going over budget.
  • Working Within Acumatica: The custom solution works within Acumatica, adding a layer of control on top of the existing system without needing to build a separate system from scratch. This means it integrates smoothly with the current workflow.

Benefits/Advantages

  • Prevents Accidental Overspending: The solution ensures that budget overruns are not accidental by enforcing the budget limits. Users will be prevented from saving purchase orders that exceed the budget.
  • Avoids Project Delays and Cost Overruns: By actively stopping overspending, the solution can prevent project delays and cost overruns that often result from budget mismanagement.
  • Reduces Strain on Client Relationships: By controlling budgets more efficiently, this solution can help improve client satisfaction by keeping projects on track financially.
  • Customizable and Flexible: The solution is customizable and has the potential to be incorporated into Acumatica as a standard feature due to its flexibility.
  • Leverages Existing Acumatica Platform: This solution leverages the Acumatica platform by adding an extra layer of control, rather than building a new system. This allows users to take advantage of the platform’s customizability.
  • Potential for System-Wide Improvement: This workaround highlights the potential to tailor Acumatica to meet your specific needs.
  • Increased Efficiency: This solution helps project managers by allowing them to create purchase orders while ensuring compliance with the approved budget.

If you are interested in implementing similar custom solutions to get the most out of Acumatica, reach out to Tayana Solutions on 678-910-2774.