How do construction companies automate expense reports in Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations?

Key takeaways

• Finance & Operations decides WIP versus profit and loss by project group, so which job a cost belongs to changes where it posts.
• A financial dimension backed by the Projects table puts the job on every ledger line, including card spend.
• Vergo proposes main account and dimensions per receipt line and delivers through ledger journal and vendor invoice entities.
• Receipts come in by text from the jobsite.

Where should you go next?

• Vergo's Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations integration
• What expense management software integrates with Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations?
• How to automate expense management in Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations
• Get started with Vergo

Why is card spend hard to get onto the job in Finance & Operations?

Expense management in Finance & Operations can import credit card transactions through a data entity, manually or on a schedule, and employees build expense reports from them. On a construction crew, the person holding the card is a foreman who knows the job number but not the category, and who fills in reports when the job allows.

Meanwhile, Project management and accounting decides posting by project group and line properties. A fixed-price job may post costs to WIP while an internal or time-and-material job posts to profit and loss. When the job is wrong or missing on a card line, the error is not just in a report; it moves money between the balance sheet and the income statement.

How do you automate it, step by step?

1. Register the app. Your admin registers the application once; Vergo then reads main accounts, financial dimensions and vendors over OData.
2. Connect existing cards. No card applications, no re-issuing and no banking change.
3. Collect receipts by text. Crews text a photo; Vergo chases what is missing.
4. Code each line. Vergo proposes main account and dimension values, including the project where you run a project-backed dimension, and shows why.
5. Review by exception. Route by project, amount or main account, or rely on policy flags.
6. Deliver. Coded spend goes in through ledger journal entities, or as vendor invoice header and lines.

What should you set up first?

If your ledger does not already carry the job, add a financial dimension backed by Projects. Microsoft's documentation describes selecting Projects so that any project value can be used as a dimension value directly, with no separate list to keep in sync. Vergo then learns which project each kind of spend belongs to from your history. If you need card spend posted as project expense transactions with a project category, review that design with us in the demo.

A practical example

A general contractor's project engineer buys safety signage for one job and printer toner for the site trailer of another on one receipt. Vergo proposes the safety supplies account with the first job's project dimension for the signage, and office supplies with the second job's project dimension for the toner, pointing to how the same supplier was coded last month. The project controller confirms, and the lines go in through the ledger journal entity.