Welcome back to our Dynamics GP vs. Dynamics Business Central Functionality Face-Off. This is Round 43. We have spent the last few rounds on the shop floor — most recently on material planning. Today we move to service and job-based work: tracking a project’s costs, billing the customer, and recognizing revenue as the work gets done.
If you bill by the project — construction jobs, consulting engagements, installations — this round is for you. Both systems can track project costs and profits. The difference is how much machinery you have to set up before the first timesheet ever posts.
How you do it in Dynamics GP
GP handles this with Project Accounting, a full module with its own structure: contracts hold projects, and projects hold cost categories.
- Set up cost categories. Every kind of cost — labor, travel, materials — needs a cost category record, and those categories are what you budget against on each project (Microsoft Learn).
- Map the posting accounts. In the accounting control setup, you assign posting accounts for each transaction type: timesheets, employee expenses, equipment logs, miscellaneous logs, and purchases/materials (Microsoft Learn). Five transaction types, each with its own entry windows and account settings.
- Capture the costs. Time goes in through timesheets, expenses through employee expense entry, materials through purchasing. Each flows through its transaction type’s rules — and small setup gaps surface fast, like timesheets that will not submit because a pay code default points at the wrong cost category (Microsoft Learn).
- Bill through billing cycles. Microsoft recommends billing cycles, which generate batches of billing invoices on the frequency you set per cycle (Microsoft Learn).
- Recognize revenue through revenue recognition cycles. Each project type carries an accounting method — When Performed or When Billed for time and materials, cost-to-cost percentage complete for fixed price. And the methods have rules: if you use cost-to-cost and forget to budget costs on your cost categories, the project computes as 0% complete and recognizes no revenue at all (Microsoft Learn).
It is a complete system, and firms that invested in the setup run serious project businesses on it. But it is a lot of structure — contract, project, cost category, five transaction types, billing cycles, revenue recognition cycles — before the first invoice goes out.
How you do it in Business Central
Business Central builds projects into the core product. No separate module — Projects ships with Essentials.
- Create the project card. A project has two layers: project tasks and planning lines. Tasks are mandatory — they work like a small chart of accounts for the project, with posting tasks and totaling tasks (Microsoft Learn).
- Add planning lines. Under each task, planning lines describe the expected use of items, resources, and other costs — and whether each line is Budget (what it costs you), Billable (what you charge), or both (Microsoft Learn). Your budget and your billing schedule live on the same lines.
- Post usage. Record time and materials through project journals, or pull project lines straight onto purchase documents. Costs land on the task, next to the plan, so actual-versus-budget is always one page away (Microsoft Learn).
- Invoice from the plan. Billable planning lines become sales invoices with the Create Sales Invoice action — bill the whole project or just the lines that are ready.
- Pick a WIP method and post it. Each project carries a WIP method: Cost Value, Cost of Sales, Sales Value, Percentage of Completion, or Completed Contract — or a custom method you define. Run Calculate WIP to see the numbers, then Post WIP to send recognized cost and revenue to the general ledger. You can even reverse a WIP posting if something was wrong (Microsoft Learn).
Side by side
| Task | Dynamics GP | Business Central |
|---|---|---|
| Where it lives | Project Accounting, a separate module | Projects, built into the core product |
| Structure | Contract > project > cost categories | Project card > tasks > planning lines |
| Budget vs. billing | Budgets on cost categories; billing set up separately | Budget and Billable on the same planning lines |
| Capturing costs | Five transaction types, each with own windows and accounts | Project journals and purchase documents |
| Billing | Billing cycles generate invoice batches | Create Sales Invoice from billable lines |
| Revenue recognition | Revenue recognition cycles per accounting method | WIP methods per project: calculate, post, reverse |
| Getting started | Significant module setup before first transaction | Create a project card and start planning |
Why BC comes out ahead
To be fair to GP: Project Accounting is deep. Billing cycles and revenue recognition cycles can process many contracts at once, and the five transaction types capture costs with real discipline. Firms that mastered it got their money’s worth.
But that depth came at the price of a long setup runway and a structure you fight when the work does not fit it. Business Central starts from the project card. Tasks and planning lines carry the plan, the budget, and the billing schedule in one place. Invoices come straight off the plan. WIP is a method you pick, calculate, and post — not a cycle you administer. For most project businesses, that means less time feeding the system and more time managing the job.
Ready to run projects without the runway?
If your team runs GP Project Accounting — or gave up on it and tracks jobs in spreadsheets — we can show you what your projects look like on a BC project card. Aisling Dynamics has mapped GP contracts, cost categories, and open WIP into Business Central for firms like yours. See what we offer, then contact us or call (251) 293-0555 for a no-pressure conversation.
Next up in Round 44: Excel integration — GP’s exports and refreshable reports vs. Business Central’s Edit in Excel. If your month lives in spreadsheets, you will want this one.