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[Jeff Woodard]

Hi all!

We’re using eConnect to create some fairly complex integrations, and wanted to see if any community members have any suggestions. We’d like to use core GP configuration as much as possible instead of coding the distributions in eConnect.

Firstly, we are trying to capture retainage transactions – this is a common scenario in the construction industry where a portion of payment for services is withheld until completion of the project.  The idea being that a service provider will stick with your project until completion rather than leave in the middle of your project for a more profitable project elsewhere. I would like to ask other community members how they handle these in GP. 

We currently handle this by doing the following:
In SOP, to bill our customer, we create 2 invoices, one for the retainage amount, and another for the total amount, with the SOP invoice for the total amount including either a markdown or trade discount.  i.e. for 10% retainage, one invoice will be for $10, and the other would be for $100 with a $10 markdown on the line. This works nicely for us, as we use a G/L segment for the location, and GP automagically replaces the location segment for the line item markdown.  We had  used the SOP header trade discount for this in the past, but this does not substitute the location segment.

In POP, to pay our service provider, we are creating a Receiving transaction shipment/invoice without a PO. As in SOP, we create the two transactions, but don’t seem to find a field similar to the SOP line markdown that will pick up the G/L location segment.  We’re currently using the trade discount on the header, but that does not substitute the location segment on the distribution.

There is no inventory attached to the item numbers we’re using, so they could either be service-type items, or non-inventory items.

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Jeff Woodard
IT Director
Transportation Financial Services, Inc.
West Palm Beach FL
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[Thaddeus Suter]

Dynamics GP Project Accounting module handles both Retainage Billing and Retention Billing for any Project. It also supports an AIA Billing format.
See below sceenshot.
We have used this functionality for retainage construction projects for at least twelve years.
Trying to do this Billing type in SOP would be challenging and since it is directly supported in PA so I would take a look at that.
You also have all the normal reports for Unbilled Retainage as the project progresses.

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Thaddeus Suter
Retus, Inc
TX
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[Thaddeus Suter]

Since I mentioned the AIA Billing here are a couple screenshots for that from GP Project Accounting as that functionality could be useful to you in Construction:

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Thaddeus Suter
Retus, Inc
TX
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[Jeff Woodard]

Hi Thaddeus,

Thanks for the followup, I was not aware that the project module handled retainage, so we’re definitely going to take a closer look at that. 

We had considered using the project module in the past, but it seemed to be overkill for our purposes. We don’t have a typical construction business model as our primary line of business is hauling of aggregate materials. With any given project, we record the material, quantity , unit of measure and have a price and a cost per unit.  This model is pretty well suited to SOP.

If we could find a way to get our GL location segment to properly substitute as a discount on the receivings transaction shipment/invoice then I think we could put the done checkmark on this one.

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Jeff Woodard
IT Director
Transportation Financial Services, Inc.
West Palm Beach FL
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[Habib Salim]

You might know that each econnect object (such as taPOHdr or taPOLine) has a pre and post execution object – really a stored proc, that can be used to set your distributions.

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Habib Salim
HSalim & Co. Inc.
Bronxville NY
https://pivotviews.com
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