Managing Projects with xTuple

At the heart of the project accounting functionality is the concept of the virtual general ledger (G/L) account. With project accounting, virtual G/L accounts are built dynamically or on-the-fly using a combination of existing G/L account numbers and the linked project name. So, for example, if you were to post an invoice for $1,000 of services related to the GREENLEAF project, the transaction would look as follows in the general ledger:

As you can see in this example, the revenue account ("Service Revenue") has the name of the project ("GREENLEAF") appended as the last segment of the G/L account number. This happens automatically. It requires no special setup, apart from enabling the project accounting functionality itself. The system simply adds the extra project segment to the G/L accounts you already have defined. With this extra segment attached you can now run financial reports by project.

You might also have noticed that the debit side of the transaction in our example—the accounts receivable side—does not have the project segment attached to it. That's because some reporting (like for accounts receivable) is not broken out by project, but is instead rolled up into the company-wide financials.