Managing Projects with xTuple

For most projects, you're going to need to receive materials to complete the jobs you're working on. If the materials are inventory items, project tracking begins when those materials are issued to project work orders. For non-inventory materials, though, project tracking begins at the point materials are received. In this section, we will follow a purchase order item as it is received and posted to the general ledger.

As we saw in the Project Basics chapter, the link between projects and purchase orders occurs at the line item level.

Non-Inventory material linked to project

For this example, we've linked a purchase order to the "GREENLEAF" project. As you can see in the screenshot, we've ordered non-inventory office supplies and specified the "OFFICE" expense category. (Like project "GREENLEAF", the "OFFICE" expense category can be found in xTuple demo databases.)

Noticing the expense category is important in this connection because it determines the expense account that will be used when the non-inventory materials are received.

Expense account for material receipt

Regardless of whether project accounting is installed or not, we can always expect to see the same G/L transaction activity when non-inventory materials are received:

The difference is that when project accounting is enabled, the expense account gains the project number segment—allowing us to track non-inventory material expenses on a project-by-project basis.

So, let's jump ahead and assume the office supplies in our example have been received and posted. The following screenshot shows the G/L activity resulting from this material receipt:

Purchasing receipt with virtual G/L account

On the Expense Category screen we learned that the standard expense account for the "OFFICE" expense category is 01-01-6000-01. Now, with a receipt linked to the "GREENLEAF" project, we see in the G/L this expense account is now represented as 01-01-6000-01-GREENLEAF. The transaction will now appear in project-specific financial reports.