Gather Project Information Before Setup
Before creating a project, finance and project teams should assemble the information required to define its financial and operational structure. The exact fields depend on the organization's Costpoint configuration, but the setup should reflect the contract and internal reporting requirements.
- Project identity: Establish the project number, name, description, and relevant status information.
- Customer and contract: Associate the project with the appropriate customer, contract, or funding arrangement.
- Owning organization: Identify the business unit or organization responsible for the project.
- Project structure: Define levels, tasks, work breakdown elements, or other structures required for cost tracking.
- Accounting requirements: Determine applicable accounts, labor categories, indirect costs, billing rules, and reporting dimensions.
Create the Project Structure
Project structure determines how Costpoint organizes financial and operational activity beneath the project. A project may contain multiple levels or task elements so teams can distinguish contracts, work packages, activities, or other reporting dimensions.
The structure should match how project managers and finance teams need to analyze costs and performance. For example, a government contractor may need to separate work by contract, task order, or funding component, while a commercial organization may organize activity by customer deliverable or implementation phase.
Clear project structures also make it easier to assign labor, materials, subcontractor costs, travel, and other expenses to the appropriate project elements. This creates more reliable data for financial reporting and project management.
Configure Budget and Financial Controls
Once the structural elements are established, finance teams can define the financial controls that govern project activity. These may include budgets, cost categories, labor assignments, indirect cost treatment, billing rules, revenue recognition requirements, and transaction controls.
Project Budgeting provides the financial framework for planning expected project costs and comparing budgeted amounts with actual activity. A project setup should support the level of detail required for meaningful budget-to-actual analysis.
Project teams should also establish how transactions will be coded when invoices and expenses enter the accounting workflow. The chart of accounts provides the account framework used for GL coding, validation, approval, and posting, helping ensure project-related transactions reach the appropriate financial accounts.
Connect Procurement and Project Activity
Project setup should account for how procurement activity will flow into project costs. Requisitions, sourcing, approvals, and a purchase order can create commitments or transactions that need to be associated with the correct project and accounting dimensions.
Connecting procurement information to project structures improves spend visibility and allows finance teams to compare committed and actual costs. This is especially useful when project managers need to monitor subcontractor purchases, materials, equipment, or other project-related spending against approved budgets.
Integrate the Project with the ERP Environment
Costpoint project configuration operates within a broader ERP environment, so teams should confirm how the project will interact with accounting, procurement, billing, payroll, reporting, and other connected processes.
Organizations using deltek Costpoint may extend finance workflows through integrations with surrounding business applications. Project setup should therefore consider which systems exchange project identifiers, customer information, accounting data, budgets, or transaction details.
During a new deployment, migration, or major configuration change, an ERP Implementation Guide for 2025 can provide a broader framework for planning the ERP lifecycle, procedures, project plan, timeline, and integration considerations.
Validate the Project Before Transaction Processing
Before users begin recording transactions, finance and project teams should validate the completed configuration. The review should confirm that project identifiers, customer and contract information, organizations, project levels, budgets, accounting rules, billing settings, and required controls are consistent with approved documentation.
Validation should also include representative transaction scenarios. Teams can verify that labor, purchasing, expenses, invoices, and other project activity flow to the intended project elements and financial accounts. This confirms that the project structure supports downstream reporting rather than simply existing as a master-data record.
Use Project Setup for Financial Analysis
A well-structured project record provides the data needed to evaluate performance throughout the project lifecycle. Finance teams can compare actual costs with budgets, monitor revenue and billing, review committed spending, and investigate changes in project margins.
Project Profitability measures the financial results generated by a project by comparing relevant revenue with associated costs. Accurate project setup improves the consistency of the data used for this analysis.
Project Evaluation provides a broader framework for reviewing a project's financial and operational characteristics before or during its lifecycle. Reliable project master data supports these evaluations by providing consistent information about budgets, costs, customers, and project structure.
Best Practices for Costpoint Project Setup
- Use consistent naming and numbering: Apply documented conventions for project identifiers and structural elements.
- Match structure to reporting needs: Create enough project detail to support meaningful financial and operational analysis.
- Align finance and operations: Confirm that project managers, accounting teams, billing teams, and procurement users share the same structural definitions.
- Validate integrations: Confirm that connected systems use the correct project identifiers and accounting dimensions.
- Review before activation: Check budgets, billing, accounting, organization, and transaction controls before project activity begins.
Summary
Setting up a project in Costpoint involves establishing the project identity, customer and contract information, organizational ownership, project hierarchy, budgets, accounting controls, billing requirements, and related integrations. A carefully configured project provides a consistent foundation for transaction processing, project budgeting, profitability analysis, financial reporting, and ongoing project management.