Generating Charges
During the midnight charge run, NetSuite generates both actual charges and forecast charges automatically for all projects. Forecast charge runs are also performed automatically by default when needed, for example, if a change that renders existing forecasts, becomes outdated. You can repress this by using the Forecast Charge Run on Demand project preference. You can also trigger both charges runs manually using buttons on the Project Financials tab.
Automatic updates for charges and forecasts take into account the time zone of the company or subsidiary.
When charges or forecasts are manually generated, a status bar appears at the top of the project with a time estimate for the availability of the updated charges or forecasts. This bar will remain visible and will update each time the project is refreshed until the charge run is complete.
The Generate Charges and Generate Forecast buttons are not available when editing the project record.
You can also create charges manually at Transactions > Customers > Create Charges.
In NetSuite OneWorld, for time-based charges, when a charge is generated and the department, class, or location of the time transaction is not available in the project’s subsidiary then the new charge will not have a department, class, or location set. For expense-based charge rules, when a charge is generated and department, class, or location of the expense report is not available in the project’s subsidiary then the new charge has department, class, or location fields set to the default values for the project’s subsidiary.
You can restrict your role to a particular subsidiary or group of subsidiaries. It will allow you to add resource groups to a project task. All group members will inherit the given restriction. This action helps you to limit the visible resource groups as needed. You can, for example, restrict the role to Asian subsidiaries only. If you want to add a resource group to the project task, only the groups containing Asian subsidiaries will appear on the dropdown list. You will not see any groups containing non-Asian members.
If you have made changes to a project and want to generate the charges manually, view the project record, click the Financials subtab on the project, and then click the Charge Run History subtab. Click the Generate Charges button to generate actual charges. Click Generate Forecast to update the forecast charges.
Forecast Charges
Forecast charges are used to calculate sales forecast amounts on reports and in the cost, revenue, and profit estimate fields on the project record.
Forecast charges are automatically generated when a project plan or project task is saved, time is tracked, or a new charge rule is created. This keeps forecast charges up-to-date when a change is made.
When using searches and reports for forecast charges, date filters may exclude active projects. For example, if you run a saved search filtering for the current quarter, projects without planned time during this quarter may not appear in your results even if the projects are still active. Search and report results for forecast charges may also change from day to day due to project and task changes, tracked time, new charge rules, or nightly forecast updates.
A project preference is available to limit the refreshing of forecasts when projects are updated. The Forecast Charge Run on Demand preference is disabled by default. When enabled, forecasts will only be updated when manually generated or with the regular nightly charge run. Enabling this preference can help alleviate any potential performance issues from forecast updates.
After a forecast charge has been generated for a charge rule, a new forecast is not created unless a change is made that impacts that forecast (such as an update to the charge rule or to the estimated work for a task.) When a forecast charge requires an update, the old forecast charge is deleted and a new one is generated.
You can initiate the generation of forecast and actual charges on the Charge Run History subtab on the project.
If your charge rules are based on service items, after a forecast has been generated, you can refresh items on sales transactions to include the service items from the forecast. The forecasted items are added to the sales transaction based on the rules you have created. The actual charges do not need to be created to add forecasted charges to a sales transaction. For more information about how to refresh project items, see Refreshing Project Items on Transactions.
If the charges take long to generate, you can enable the Asynchronous Project Plan Recalculation preference at Setup > Company > General Preferences. For more information, see Asynchronous Project Plan Recalculation.
Items and Billing Schedules with Charge-Based Billing
Charge-based billing uses service and expense items to associate charges with sales transactions and to set the income account for charge-based project revenue.
For time-based charge rules, service items are not always used to determine the billing rate for charges but are instead used to categorize charges on transactions. The pricing defined on service items is only used if you choose to use the service item price to determine the rate for time-based charge rules.
A billing schedule can be set for a charge-based project, but billing frequency is always determined by the charge rule. The billing schedule is only used to calculate and group items on sales forecasts.