cp-97: paving the road: how aecom is using costpoint to ... · aecom management services deltek...

CP-97:Paving the Road: How AECOM is Using Costpoint to Track and Bill Equipment

James D. Mitchell, AECOM Management Services

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Agenda

AECOM Management Services Deltek Insight 2019 Track and Bill Equipment

• Background

• Approach

• Testing

• The Process

• Go Live & Lessons Learned

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Background


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Business Need – Background


• Project was put together to move contracts from an Oracle ERP to Deltek

Costpoint

• Management Services was chosen as an effort to work towards a goal of a

standardized delivery of systems (T&E, Costpoint and Cognos)

− Benefit: Savings by standardizing the management of service contracts

− Benefit: Long-term efficiencies

− Benefit: Consolidated systems and support staff

• MS Costpoint houses mostly Government contracts, while the Oracle contracts

were Commercial

• Business line and concepts were fairly new to MS

• Multiple Oracle migrations into Costpoint

− Proven to be efficient and successful

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Business Need – Equipment Management


• One particular process was identified as a requirement for the migration as it was

critical to the how the organization managed the contracts

• A requirement to track equipment and it’s usage came up as part of various team

meetings

• As various parts of the process were discussed, it was not initially understood

− “Sounds like a service center”

− “Part of an Overhead”

− “Why are we billing ourselves”

• Management of equipment and its usage was new

• Current process was very manual

− Paper were being passed around

− Manually keyed and adjusted into system

− Data was keyed multiple times

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Business Need – Equipment Requirements


• The main goal was to track equipment from purchase through allocation to the

client projects then billing to the customer

• Requirements were:

− Capture equipment usage through time entry using various units of measure

− Reimburse personal equipment usage to the employee

− Record costs associated with each piece of equipment

− Charge a Service Bill Rate (SBR) to the client project as costs (ex. $6.30)

− Identify equipment as company owned, leased, rented or personal

− Flexible enough to change bill rate based on UOM to provide lowest total

amount to customer (ex. 4 days vs. 1 week)

− Tax Personal equipment reimbursement as necessary

− Analyze over/under for each piece of equipment

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Business Need – Help Wanted


• Resources were needed to help ensure that we gathered all of the requirements

and to work with the team defining a process

− Tony Bowser joined the team as a consultant to help define and automate this

process as much as possible using the tools available to us

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Approach


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Approach – Service Centers


• Multiple discussions lead to using Costpoint to do the natural allocation of costs

that were being collected

• Service Centers provided a good foundation on collecting the costs associated to

each piece of equipment then allocating it out to the direct projects

• Service Centers also allowed us to dictate what to allocate, how and where

− Change in practice – Full allocation of costs vs Service Bill Rate

• One part of the business agreed on using the SC allocation methodology

− Each piece of equipment would require an individual SC

− It would have resulted into over 1,000 SCs

• Question asked: Could we group them? Response: No

− Would not be able to do the proper analysis

• Required too many Service Centers, not a viable option

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Approach – Projects


• Projects were needed to capture the equipment usage, associated costs, allocate

to client project and bill to the customer

− Very summarized by overall locations that owned the equipment

• Only option is to break down the Projects further for each individual piece of

equipment that needed to be tracked and managed

• Tag number identified as part of the Project structure

• Standard Indirect structure did not fit the needs to identify and track the

equipment

• Management didn’t originally approve of the change to the Indirect structure & org

requirements

− Too much reporting based on the current structure and rules

• After more detailed discussions, Management finally agreed to minimal changes

• Process needed to be defined

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Approach – Payroll and Costing Information


• Where and how do we capture payroll and costing information for the equipment

• Equipment were tagged and managed through Item Goods in Product Definition

• Repurpose unused fields to record Pay and Cost information

− Manage Goods Costs subtask was the answer

• Ability to identify different units of measure for pay and costing

− Ability to split taxable vs non-taxable for payroll

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Approach – Payroll and Costing Information


• Repurposed fields were “standardized” for reporting

− Total Unit Costs – Hourly rates

− This-Level Unit Costs – Daily rates

− Labor fields – Non-Taxable Payroll

− Labor Burden fields – Taxable Payroll

− Misc fields – Cost Allocation to Direct Projects

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Approach – Capturing Usage


• Unknown how to capture usage of the equipment

• Project Labor Categories were discussed

− Limited characters

− Different structure compared to the Tag Number

− Viewed as labor rather than usage

• Current functionality within Time Collection could capture the Tag Number – UDT

• Ability to record transactions linked to a daily timesheet

• Could be managed in a central location

• Allowed reporting to be used for downstream activities

− Payroll

− Costing

− Billing

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Approach – Process Flow


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Testing


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Testing


• Needed to gather all of the “active” equipment,

which were not centralized

• Standardize the tagging system while staying

similar to the current

• User Defined Fields were created to track/link

information

− Link Item Good to Asset ID, if applicable

− Assign Over/Under Project tracking the equipment

costs

• Finalize the CLIN Units setup with different rates for

a single piece of equipment and link them to

individual Projects

• Crosswalks created to map old IDs to new IDs

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Testing


• Pulling a form together identifying all of the information needed to setup Item

• Struggled to get the system ready for testing (not related to the process)

• Running through small batches to better define the process

• Ensured reporting capabilities worked as intended and could support the process

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The Process


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The Process


• Overall process required 3 main components that needed to be set up

− Product Definition (Item Goods)

− Time Collection

− Billing

• As a 4th component, Fixed Assets was only required during certain situations but

was not required to process equipment usage through the system

• From the point the piece of equipment was brought in, a number of steps, forms

and departments were required to fully set up the equipment transactions

• Process started with identifying the piece of equipment for use on a project

− Company Owned

− Lease/Rental

− Personal

• Three Cognos Reports were created to support the processing

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The Process – Step 1: Initial Setup (Personal Equipment)


• Employees are allowed to use selected personal equipment on the job if approved

• Agreements are drawn up with the employee defining the rate of pay for the use of

each personal equipment

• These amounts must be included on the Equipment Usage Form as part of the

Equipment setup in Product Definition

Project Terms & Conditions

Per Diem

Frequency

Amount $

Housing

Transportation

Rig Pay (only applicable to welders) $21/hr

Truck Pay $70/day with fuel card

Weld Skills Assessment

Weld Skills Assessment Location

(Location to include physical address: District

Office or Client Site or Other Training site)

Weld Skills Assessment Requirements

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The Process – Step 1: Initial Setup


• Specific Forms are required for the initial

requests to set up the Equipment

• Equipment Usage Form* submitted to

Equipment Manager

− Identifies the Equipment and charging

elements

• Fixed Asset form submitted to Fixed Asset

Manager, as appropriate

• Indirect Project Setup form submitted to

Accounting

− Over/Under Project setup to capture the

costs associated with the equipment

* Form is still being modified

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The Process – Step 1: Product Definition Goods


Example: AECOM Owned Equipment

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The Process – Step 1: Product Definition Goods


Example: Personal Equipment

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The Process – Step 2: Usage & Billing Setup


• Forms forwarded for Time and Billing set up

• Completed Equipment Usage Form forwarded to the Labor team

− Usage could not be recorded until the Item was set up in Time Collection

− Item manually added to the UDT table (centrally controlled)

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The Process – Step 2: Usage & Billing Setup


• Equipment Usage From and applicable rate schedule is sent to the Billing team

− Notifies the team that a new piece of equipment needed to be set up as a

Billable Item then added to CLIN Units Usage

− While the Equipment Usage Form identifies the item, the rate schedule

identifies the unit of measure and rate at which the equipment can be billed out

− If the equipment requires multiple units of measure, additional CLINs are set up

to accommodate the different rates for the individual item

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The Process – Step 3: Recording Equipment Usage


• Employees record equipment usage on their timesheet

• Separate field for each Equipment (UDT/Item ID) used on every TS row

• Pay Type was used to specify unit of measure (ex. EQH, EQD, EQP, etc.)

• For Personal (EQP) Equipment, two records were required

− Record the use of personal equipment (EQP) for payroll (ex. 1 day) charged to the

Over/Under Project

− Record actual usage time of equipment (EQH) for costing/billing (ex. 8 hours) charged to

the Direct Project

• Equipment information is not passed on to Costpoint however the usage information was in

addition to the standard “labor” data

− An Amount is not applied when Equipment TS rows are imported into Costpoint

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The Process – Step 4: Employee Payment


• For Personal Equipment that is being used on the job, the Employee is

reimbursed based on an agreed amount made with the Project

• An additional step is required once the usage transaction is imported into

Costpoint

• Using Cognos, a report was developed to capture the necessary information from

Time Collection and Product Definition

• The report created a Labor preprocessor file to be loaded into Costpoint Labor

− Time Collection populated the Equipment, Unit of Measure and Dates

− Product Definition populated the agreed upon Payroll amounts for each

personal equipment

− When applicable, the report would take the payroll amounts and create two

records, one as taxable and another as non-taxable along with their appropriate

Pay Types

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The Process – Step 5: Equipment Costing


• Two types of costs

− Depreciation, maintenance, repairs or other costs associated to the equipment

charged to the Over/Under Project

− Costs applied to the Direct Projects for the use of the equipment

• Costs associated to the equipment are charged to the Over/Under Project through

“natural” methods (ex. FA, APV, LD, etc.)

• Costs due to the usage of the equipment are charged to the Direct Project via an

Adjusting Journal Entry using a Cognos report pulling information from Time

Collection and Product Definition

• The report created an AJE preprocessor file to be loaded as a Journal Entry

− Time Collection populated the Equipment, Project, Unit of Measure and Dates

− Product Definition populated the cost amounts associated to the Equipment

− Over/Under Project that the Equipment was assigned to (Credit entry)

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The Process – Step 6: Equipment Billing


• Usage has been recorded on the TS and the costs applied to the usage has been

charged to the Direct Project using an Unallowable Account in the PAG

• Using Cognos, a report was developed to capture the necessary information from

Time Collection

• The report created an Units preprocessor file to be loaded as a Units Usage Entry

− Time Collection populated the Equipment, Project, UOM (Pay Type), Dates and

miscellaneous Employee Information (ID & Name)

− Using the data gathered from TC, the report positioned and translated the

information to be read in the Units Import

− CLIN was defined by the UOM (ex. EQH – Hours, EQD – Days, etc.)

• In some cases, the data would need to be adjusted based on the contract needs

before it was loaded into Costpoint

• The final import file would be loaded and processed through to the Invoice

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Go Live & Lessons Learned


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Go Live – Communication & Training


• Full process was still being defined and tested

• Employees/Timesheet Coordinators needed to understand how to enter the

information into Time Collection

• Labor Team needed to know what to look for and how to correct, if necessary

− Personal Equipment reimbursement

− Process to get the data entered or corrected

• Accounting Team needed to understand what to look for and an appropriate

amount for the AJE

− Identify if all usage was captured in the report

− Personal Equipment was reimbursed but identify if both lines were entered

• Billing team needed to reconcile what was being charged on the Timesheet to

what was being billed

• Communication and Training was required multiple times and to the larger group

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Lessons Learned


• The original process was very manual and required many hours to complete

• It did not allow for a “clean” method of analysis or tracking

• In some cases, the over/under process wasn’t working and the information got

lost requiring an incredible amount of work to “unwind” it

• The new process allowed the equipment to be tracked and managed better

• Allowed the appropriate analysis to be done to better understand the true value of

the equipment being used

− Lease/Rent vs. Buy

− Personal vs. Lease/Rent

• Better communication and training

− Basic understanding of entry point by Employee/Timesheet Coordinator

− Full understanding of the process was very limited to a small group

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Lessons Learned


• Full process was still being defined and tested after phase 1 go live

• Responsibilities were not fully defined

• Identifying the best communication paths to ensure full coordination between

teams (ex. Procurement, Fixed Assets, Equipment, Accounting, Projects, etc.)

• How do we not get “lost” or lose a step in the process

• Reconciliation to ensure information (cost/billing) isn’t being duplicated or missed

• Involving all of the right people at the right times

• Dedicated time to map and test the process fully with the larger team

− Understand what worked and what didn’t

− Define the training needs better

− Communicate based on audience

• Using Extensibility in Production Definition for the Pay/Cost Amounts

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Contact Information


James D. Mitchell

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

cp-97: paving the road: how aecom is using costpoint to ... · aecom management services deltek...

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