Deltek Costpoint Early Adopter Program 8.1

Redstone GCI has been pleased to be a part of the Early Adopter testing program for Costpoint version 8.1. There have been numerous changes and improvements within the system in all modules, but we would like to highlight the below areas that our consultants found most useful.

Time & Expense

One of the most useful updates has been the change in integration between Costpoint and T&E. In this latest version, the system will look directly at Costpoint for master data. There will be no need to run the export/import process for changes like adding new projects, accounts, organizations, pay types, and activating or de-activating charge codes. This will not only save time but help keep data consistent when end users are no longer able to add these fields manually on the Time & Expense side of the system. Another improvement will be the additional overtime calculation options. The system will now be able to automatically calculate overtime on timesheets, eliminating the need for employees to designate hours into separate categories. There are also new fields for determining overtime on Saturday, Sunday, or on a holiday. For those clients with SCA, Union, or California employees, this will be a welcome addition to the timesheet setup. Lastly, there has been the addition of offline timesheets. Once a system administrator allows offline timesheets in the configuration, the user can make their top ten timesheet periods available offline, which will help with timesheet entry during travel periods.

Projects

The projects module has some cool new features and improvements with the Costpoint 8.1 release. The first upgrade worth noting is the new project Long Name field that will be added to the details tab of the Manage Project User Flow screen. This allows the user to enter a more meaningful description of the project with up to 120 characters. The Long Name field will assist in more accurate charging and project reporting. The second feature we would like to highlight is the new Billing Worksheet for Standard Bills. This report provides invaluable data to both Accounts Receivable and Project Control during invoicing and can be run on posted or unposted invoices. The billing worksheet will display how the bill was computed, costs already billed, and remaining amounts to be billed. This allows reconciliation of the bill more easily to the GL and any unbilled costs before it is posted and sent to the customer. For projects with cost plus billing and revenue formulas, the billing worksheet can also compare ITD billed amounts to the ITD cost incurred at actual OR target rates. Last but certainly not least, the 8.1 release has a new enhancement that enables the user to manage and track functional roles used in Projects, T&E, Business Intelligence, and Contracts all in one screen. There is also a new screen that will be a subtask of the Manage Project User Flow screen, Manage Project Roles, that allows the user to assign roles to projects and users. With this addition you can assign roles to multiple projects, multiple levels of projects, and assign users multiple roles in projects.

Materials

The materials module has new features becoming available with Costpoint 8.1, several which have been on many companies’ wish lists for updates! A new capability has been added to record DPAS rating on Purchase Orders and pass rating information along to suppliers. Note fields within the requisitions and purchase orders have been dramatically increased to allow users to enter / display more characters, eliminating the need to keep additional information in other areas or send notes outside of Costpoint.   Standard text associated with specific items can now be autoloaded to purchase orders, requisition, sales orders, bills of material and manufacturing orders. There are also new enhancements to interface with the Contract Management module.   One allows users to initiate purchase orders and/or requisition directly from the Manage Subcontracts screen; and another one, for customers with GovWin, displays a warning message for vendors that are on the exclusion list.   Updates to the supplier portal allow suppliers to enter shipment information and simplify invoice delivery.   Suppliers can enter shipping data directly into Costpoint and a buyer will be notified by email of the update. Additionally, suppliers can also enter invoicing information associated with purchase order for parts, goods and services; and subcontractors can view and approve invoices created from the Subcontractor Management module. Both features include email notifications and will help companies streamline the payment process. Finally, the Supplier also has a new feature to utilize digital signature technologies to make transactions legally binding without the need for signed copies of documents. There are several additional enhancements that are associated with the production control area of the materials module that we think users will be excited about, but we’ll cover them in a later article so stayed tuned for further updates!