Project accounting: From Dynamics SL to Business Central

Project accounting can be an extremely complex process, involving multiple departments, workflows, and data sources across your organization. It’s no wonder, then, that the thought of moving all those workflows and all that information from one platform to another can fill even the most tech-savvy accountant with dread.

If you’ve been using Microsoft Dynamics SL for project accounting, that transition is now unavoidable. Microsoft has announced that extended support for Dynamics SL will end on July 12, 2028, giving organizations a limited window to plan for what comes next.

To accommodate Dynamics SL users, Business Central offers robust built-in functionality that supports project accounting processes. Read on to learn more about how Business Central provides a connected, streamlined approach to project accounting (you'll hardly miss Dynamics SL). 

For many businesses, Dynamics SL, Microsoft’s legacy ERP solution for project-driven organizations, has served as their hub for project and financial management for nearly 30 years.

The platform offers a robust set of modules geared toward project accounting, including Project Budgeting, Time and Expense for Projects, Project Controller, and Analyzer. Together, these modules gave organizations the ability to track project costs, manage budgets, monitor performance, and dig into their financial data. (Note: These modules are only available in the Advanced Management Edition of Dynamics SL.)

But as capable as Dynamics SL is, it was built for a different era of business; some of its underlying processes can create challenges for organizations trying to keep up with fast-paced initiatives or nuanced projects. 

One example is its reliance on batch processing. Rather than processing transactions individually as they’re entered, Dynamics SL accumulates tasks into batches that are then processed together on timed intervals. That approach can cause interruptions to the flow of your financial management. 

Things like: 

There’s another reason to start looking beyond Dynamics SL: the platform is already on borrowed time. Microsoft ended mainstream support for the application on January 9, 2024, and extended support is scheduled to end on July 12, 2028. After that, there will be no additional enhancements, feature fixes, or security updates.

For businesses that have relied on Dynamics SL for project accounting, there’s no question of whether the system can do the job. But it’s time to start wondering if you want to continue to host or even implement project accounting practices on a platform that is fast approaching the end of its support lifecycle.

When you use Business Central for project accounting, you can drill down into the minute detail that you need for accurate and beneficial project accounting. Plus, all involved teams (finance, project management, operations) within your organization can work from a centralized location, with full autonomy over their specific roles and visibility into the entire project.

Business Central gives teams access to project-based functions like:

Business Central's Projects module provides a central place to organize and manage the financial aspects of project work. Formerly known as the Jobs functionality, Projects allows you to organize larger projects into smaller tasks and track the resources, costs, budgets, and billing associated with each one.

When you create a project in Business Central, you can add individual tasks to define each segment of work that needs to be completed. Project planning lines then allow you to specify the associated resources and financial details of each task, including:

Tasks can also be organized into phases and subtasks, giving everyone better visibility of where the project stands and its overall progress.

As transactions are logged, Business Central automatically connects them to the appropriate job or task, making it easier to keep project data organized and up to date. Project managers can then use that live data to create in-depth financial reports whenever they need them, without waiting on finance or IT teams to pull the information together.

Billing is also simpler. Business Central automatically generates invoices using data from tasks within a project, applying the appropriate contract terms and billing rules that you’ve set in your system along the way. 

For projects that span multiple accounting periods, the timing of costs, billing, and revenue recognition can create a challenge. Work-in-progress (WIP) accounting allows businesses to track work performed or costs incurred outside of regular financial cycles, so they can still count toward projects even if they have yet to be billed or recognized as revenue.

Business Central's Project module supports several calculation and posting methods for WIP accounting, including:

Qualifying organizations using Dynamics SL can save on an upgrade to Business Central with Microsoft’s Bridge to the Cloud promotion, valid from now until December 31st 2027. Bridge to the Cloud provides a 30% discount on licenses through a three-year guided migration period.

Promotion customers are also entitled to dual access rights during and up until the promotional term ends. Dual access rights mean that you can continue to use your current SL system as normal, all while you implement, customize, and test Business Central at the same time.

This is a one-way transition, so at the end of the three-year promotion period, you must be fully migrated to Business Central and will no longer have dual access rights to your existing Microsoft ERP.

Learn more about Bridge to the Cloud and see if you qualify. →

Every organization is different, so no two migrations or implementations will look the same. In general, you can expect the following steps to be part of your system transition:

For a more extensive guide to transitioning away from Dynamics SL, Microsoft provides an end-to-end overview.

Our Syvantis Learn course, "Preparing to leave Dynamics GP: A comprehensive transition guide," offers step-by-step information on leaving one sunsetting software and moving to its modern counterpart. The process is similar no matter what platform you're leaving, so useful tips, tools, and techniques can still be gleaned from this course even if it's Dynamics SL that you'll be departing.

Register for the course here. 

If you have yet to begin your transition away from Dynamics SL, it can feel like a massive hurdle stands between you and the cloud-based, always up-to-date project accounting capabilities of modern ERPs.

Don't let that deter you. With Syvantis consultants in your corner, you'll have trusted, knowledgeable advisors who care about your business to guide you every step of the way. 

Ready to leave Dynamics SL behind?