There are tons of CPA software solutions that CPAs, accounting firms and other business professionals use to simplify their complex tasks. However, when it comes to mid-sized CPA firms, the only technology that will streamline processes in a good way is Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation (PSA). It is well-known that PSA is one of the most trustworthy and best CPA software solutions designed and developed by Microsoft. More than a utility software, it is more like a CPA Firms practice management software. Let me take you through an example of how U.S. based CPA Firm BPM is leveraging PSA to streamline their sales process and enhance their internal operations. About BPM Certified Public Accounting Firm: BPM is one of the largest California-based public accounting and advisory firms. Ranking amongst the 50 major firms in the US, they have offices across Oregon, Hong Kong, and the Cayman Islands. They serve a range of sectors from financial services, technology, life science and consumer business to real estate, non-profits, wine, and craft beverages. You can read more about BPM at https://www.bpmcpa.com/. Business Requirement: BPM wanted a solution that would streamline their sales processes and make customization and enhancements in their existing D365 for PSA for greater capability. Solution Delivered: CloudFronts commenced its professional journey with BPMC in December 2017 and continue to work with them. We worked with them every single day to cater to their existing Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation capabilities. The team rectifies and modify their reports, along with adding functionality to their existing PSA deployment. Further, the team had a review of the critical entities within the Sales module of Dynamics 365 and customized them as per the client requirements and specific business needs. Till date, the CloudFronts team is working with them to upgrade their D365 environments from v8.2 to v9. SSRS report was developed for Managers to view the availability of Team and their allocations on different Projects. Key Technologies 1.       Dynamics 365 Sales 2.       Dynamics 365 for PSA (Project Service Automation) 3.       SSRS Reporting Post Go Live: BPM went live with the project on 20 July 2018. With the ongoing support and maintenance of Dynamics 365 for PSA provided by CloudFronts, the BPMC team is now able to deliver projects on time without any obstructions while increasing employee productivity tremendously. By leveraging the enhanced capabilities of D365 Sales module, the BPMC team is now able to provide a robust end-end overview of the streamlined sales process thus increasing productivity and get actionable insights. Professional Services Automation software offers CPA’s digital tools they need to streamline and standardize their project accounting activities, even though each project is distinctly different from all the others. Fundamentally, every CPA firm is a business that sells the services of accounting, so mastering its business practices is key to its success. Several PMI studies reveal that adopting a standardized, structured approach to operations and practices was the strongest indicator of corporate success. Want to know how we can prove beneficial to you? Contact us now for free consultation and demo here. https://www.cloudfronts.com/contact-us/    

Problem Definition: As soon I upgraded my PSA version from V2 to V3, I saw that the role field got deprecated. Not only that, it was removed from Schedule (WBS in V2). We now had the functionality to directly assign resource to the task against having assign role. The projects that got migrated from V2 to V3 were all tagged with the resource named “Auto-Developer” and were with the roles, but, was not advisable to go the deprecated way. We now as an organization, heavily dependent on our day-to-day activities had to change the way we work and had to understand and reframe the working methodology for the following things: How to take care of the tasks that we need to make it Non-Billable Where to assign roles and learn to assign Resources instead. Solution: The above problem was not an easy cake to eat. The impact went all the way to Schedule Board and we need to redesign the way we allocate on tasks, since, I started seeing duplicate tasks on schedule board, one with Role and one without Role. I had to change the view query to reflect the tasks without role and match the remaining hours to the previously assigned hours on the task. Now this became a major challenge. We had to export all the bookings from the system and delete the previous allocations on the task with role to the task without role. This would then match the remaining hours to allocate on the task. The next things I did to make the tasks be treated as Non-Billable was to add the Column in the Schedule named Category, Wherein I added a Category named “Non-Billable”. This category was made Non-Chargeable. This is the Transaction Category which can be added from SettingsàTransaction Categories. I added a Calculated Field on the Project form then to calculate the Billable Hours which excluded this Non-billable Category task to see the correct Billable estimate of the project. BI Team in your organization will now need to change the reports adjusting to the above criteria to reflect the correct data. This blog reflects my personal findings and based solely on my experience of using PSA for last 3 years. For those who are looking for a platform that can track and manage the entire procedures of sales and project managements, I would highly recommend them to try Microsoft dynamics 365 for project service automation.