Simplified Use of Percent Complete Recognition Rules in OpenAir

Organizations that would like to use percent complete revenue recognition rules often run into difficulty when their regular business processes do not include sufficient project or resource management information to allow NetSuite OpenAir to reliably calculate percent complete automatically.

Back in February, we posted a tip called “Manually Managing Task Percent Complete” to explain how to overcome some of those issues. This tip goes further into that topic to explain how to link the manually managed task percent complete to revenue recognition. And, as an advanced bonus tip, we explain a process to manage accurate percent complete revenue projections from NetSuite OpenAir with minimal effort.

Setup Assumptions for Manual Management of Percent Complete Recognition

In addition to the setup suggestions in the February tip, the following settings are recommended.

Internal Switches

• Request that NetSuite OpenAir Support enable “Allow tasks as well as phases in percent complete recognition rules”.

Revenue Management Tasks

• It’s best to create a task to be used exclusively for managing % complete revenue,
  • The task should be one that is not used for timekeeping – with no planned hours and no task assignments.

Percent Complete Recognition Rules

• Select “Calculate using % complete for [the task created above]”.

Monthly Process

When it’s time to recognize revenue for the project, update the revenue management task’s percent complete using the methods described in the February tip, or take advantage of the “Project Center” where the percent complete column can be updated using in-line editing.

Once the task percent complete is set, run the recognition rule to create the desired recognition transaction from the updated percent complete.

Advanced Bonus Tip – Percent Complete Revenue Projections

If your regular business processes do not include sufficiently detailed management of resource bookings or task planned hours and dates to create accurate revenue projections, here’s an approach that can overcome those limitations.

Setup Assumptions for Manually Managed % Complete Revenue Projections

Charge Projection Settings

• Access your Charge Project Settings from Administration : Projects : Charge Projections
• “Charge projection hours are from” must be set up with any of the three options that include booked hours
  • Booked hours
  • Approved and booked hours
  • Worked and booked hours
• “Create recognition projections” must be selected.

Generic Resource

• Create a generic resource called “Forecast revenue by percent”.

Booking Type

• Create a Booking type called “Forecasting”

 

Forecasting Process

• Navigate to the Project Center and select the 31 icon to configure the grid to MONTHLY.
• Select the “Resource” icon  to the left of the revenue management task created above and select the “Forecast revenue by percent” generic resource.
• For the row that is inserted in the grid, select the “Forecasting” booking type.
• In the bookings area of the form, instead of entering hours, enter the percent of the project you expect to complete in each month. The total of all entries should always sum to 100. (It helps to include Hours – Booked in the list of visible columns, so you can see the total at all times.)
• Save your updates.
• 
• In subsequent months, you need only update the percentages in the monthly grid so that they represent the desired forecast percentage complete you have achieved and plan to achieve each period.

Once revenue projections are generated (usually a nightly process), you will be able to report on future revenue recognition projections that will match the entries made in the Project Center.