Projects in Business Central
How Business Central handles project accounting, resourcing, time, and billing — and when to step up to Project Operations.
Business Central's project module (called Jobs in older versions; Projects in newer ones) is built for services-led businesses that need to track time and cost against engagements and bill customers from them. It is genuinely capable for SMB consulting, agency, light professional services, installation, and field-work organisations — and stops short of being a full PSA (professional services automation) suite.
Projects and tasks. A project belongs to a customer and contains a hierarchy of project tasks. Each task has a budget and a billable plan. Tasks roll up into the project for profitability and WIP reporting.
Planning lines. Within a task, planning lines describe what is budgeted, billable, or both: hours of a resource at a sell rate, items consumed at cost, GL expenses. Planning is in three flavours — Budget (cost only), Billable (revenue only), or Both (combined). This separation makes it easy to model fixed-price work, time-and-materials, and capped engagements.
Resources and time. Resources (people or equipment) have unit costs and price lists. Time sheets let users enter hours by week against projects and tasks, which then post to job journals. Resource availability and basic capacity planning are included.
Posting and WIP. As resources consume time and items are issued to a project, job ledger entries record cost and the WIP module can defer those costs to the balance sheet via WIP journals, recognised as revenue and COGS on completion or percentage-of-completion.
Billing. Job Sales Invoices are created from billable lines, in advance or in arrears, with milestone schedules, retainers, and progress billing all supported.
Limits. Resource-level utilisation reporting, formal resource scheduling boards, and complex pricing/billing rules (multi-currency milestone with retention, for example) are basic. Companies that need full PSA — opportunity-to-cash for services with resourcing, scheduling, and complex billing — typically move to Project Operations, which is a separate Dynamics 365 app that integrates back to BC or Finance.
Related guides
- Jobs vs Projects in Business CentralThe 2023 rename of Jobs to Projects in Business Central — what changed, what didn't, and how the renaming affects extensions, reports, and people.
- Service Management in Business CentralBusiness Central's service module — service items, contracts, work orders, dispatch, and where the limits sit.
- Time sheets in Business CentralHow time sheets work in Business Central — resource time capture, project posting, approval workflow, and integration with payroll.
- Work in progress (WIP) and recognition for projects in Business CentralHow Business Central recognises revenue and cost on projects — the four WIP methods, completion percentages, and how WIP entries hit the general ledger.
- Account schedules and financial reports in Business CentralHow Business Central's account schedules and the newer Financial Reports feature work — and how to build P&L and balance sheet reports without leaving BC.