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The Business Central project structure in plain terms
Project card
Holds the customer to bill, the person responsible, the status and the WIP method. One project can also bill several customers at task level in recent versions.
Project tasks
A breakdown of the work into phases or deliverables, with headings, posting lines and totals. It works much like a chart of accounts for the job.
Planning lines
Each line is Budget, Billable or both. Budget lines are what you expect to spend; billable lines are what you intend to invoice.
Resources
People and equipment with unit costs and prices, grouped into resource groups, and scheduled against their capacity.
Project journals
Where hours, materials and expenses post to a project task. Purchase invoices and inventory issues can post to projects directly.
Time sheets
Staff enter hours per week against project tasks; a manager approves them, and approved lines post to the project.
Project posting groups
Decide which G/L accounts receive WIP, costs applied and sales applied. That way each project lines up with the ledger at month-end.
Project price lists
You can set prices and costs for resources, items and G/L accounts on one project. So a client's agreed rate card does not change anyone else's.
Choosing a WIP method your auditor will accept
Business Central project billing: from planning line to invoice
Invoices in Business Central project accounting come from billable planning lines. For time and materials, posting hours to a task can create billable lines on its own. You then pull those lines onto a sales invoice. For fixed-price work, you create billable lines for each milestone or progress bill. Then you invoice each one when the team hits the milestone.
The invoice comes from the project rather than a separate entry. As a result, the project shows invoiced to date against budget at any moment. Each month you recalculate WIP and post it to the G/L. That moves the difference between cost, revenue and billing onto the balance sheet.
Some firms need retention, certified pay applications or complex contract billing formats. Those are not standard and usually call for an extension or a specialist app.
How we build Business Central project accounting around your contracts
- 1
Read the contracts
We look at a handful of real contracts: fixed fee, time and materials, and anything unusual. Billing terms drive the whole design.
- 2
Agree the Business Central project task template
We define a standard task structure so every project reports the same phases. That makes cross-project reporting possible.
- 3
Set costs and prices
Your controller settles resource costs, price lists by customer or project and the WIP method per project type with us.
- 4
Switch on time sheets
We set up approvers, periods and reminders. Then a few staff pilot the weekly routine before everyone starts.
- 5
Run a WIP month
Finance calculates and posts WIP for a trial month in a sandbox, then compares the result to their existing schedule.
Signs a Business Central project setup needs rework
- ✓Project managers keep their own budget spreadsheets because nobody updates the planning lines.
- ✓Finance calculates WIP but never posts it, so the balance sheet ignores unbilled work.
- ✓Every project uses a different task structure, so no report compares one job to another.
- ✓Purchase invoices for job materials post to G/L accounts instead of project tasks. Job margins then look better than they are.
- ✓Staff enter time weeks late, which makes billing late and costs incomplete at month-end.
- ✓Projects stay open long after the work ends, so WIP and job reports keep counting finished work.
Business Central project accounting questions
Is Business Central good enough for a professional services firm?
Yes, for firms that bill by project, track hours and need WIP on the balance sheet. The standard module covers that core well. It is lighter on resource scheduling across a large bench and on client-facing portals. Firms with those needs sometimes pair it with a dedicated professional services app.
Can we bill different customers on one project?
Recent versions allow a bill-to customer per project task, so a single project can invoice more than one party. Before that, firms created separate projects per customer. We check your version and set it up accordingly.
How do time sheets connect to payroll?
Business Central time sheets record project and resource hours, not pay. In the US, a separate payroll provider handles payroll. You can export hours to it or feed them through an integration. We help you decide whether one time entry can serve both, which saves staff from typing hours twice.
Which WIP method should we use?
That is an accounting policy decision for your controller and auditor, not a software default. We explain how each of the five methods behaves in Business Central. Then we run your own data through the one you pick. Many firms use different methods for time and materials and fixed-price projects.
Talk to us about your project.
Tell us what you run today and what has to change. A senior consultant replies with a written next step.