MICROSOFT PRODUCT CAPABILITIES
Keep the promise connected to the project.
Project Operations brings project selling, planning, resource management, time, and expenses together. Microsoft offers different deployment models, so the right fit depends on how project delivery connects to your accounting and operational systems.
Project-based selling
Build estimates, quotes, and contracts around the services you deliver, with pricing and expected effort visible before work starts.
Planning and resources
Break work into tasks, plan effort, and match people to demand using project and resource scheduling capabilities.
Time, expenses, and progress
Capture delivery activity and approvals against the project so project managers can follow effort, cost, and progress.
Billing preparation
Use approved project transactions to prepare billing. Project Operations Core passes pro forma billing information to your financial system.
Choose the deployment deliberately
Core suits project delivery connected to an external financial system. Integrated with ERP connects project delivery and Dynamics 365 Finance. Manufacturing scenarios cover projects involving stocked items and production.
Put it to work with Braintree.
Braintree maps the hand-off from sales to delivery, configures project controls, and connects billing and financial records so the quoted work can be followed through execution.
Microsoft product guidance
01
Keep the promise connected to the work
Project Operations is useful when the commercial agreement and the delivery plan need to remain connected. A consultancy may win a project using one estimate, schedule people using another spreadsheet and discover the real cost only when invoices are prepared. The application provides a way to connect opportunity, pricing, project planning and recorded delivery.
A useful example is a fixed-scope implementation that later gains an extra workstream. The change affects the quote, delivery effort, resource demand and billing. The project process must record approval of the change and distinguish the original commitment from the revised plan. Visibility alone does not control scope; the team needs agreed decision points.
02
Plan, assign and record with separate responsibilities
Project planning describes the work and its dependencies. Resource management describes who can perform it and when. Time and expense records describe the effort and costs actually incurred. Treating these as separate but connected responsibilities avoids assuming that a booking means work is complete or that a timesheet is automatically billable.
Managers need a consistent way to compare budget, actuals and expected remaining work. A useful review examines the reason for variance: additional scope, a different resource mix, late time entry or a changed delivery date. The application can supply the records, but the forecast is only as credible as the process used to update it.
03
Choose the financial depth before configuring the project
Microsoft currently distinguishes Project Operations Core, Integrated with ERP and manufacturing deployment scenarios. Core provides the project-selling and delivery experience, including proforma invoicing. Integrated with ERP adds the connected accounting and customer-invoicing depth. Manufacturing scenarios address production orders and stocked materials. These are deployment decisions, not interchangeable labels for the same installation.
The important boundary on this page is the customer-engagement-to-project handover. If the requirement includes accounting, revenue recognition, inventory or production, it needs the appropriate finance and operations scope. Microsoft also warns that changing deployment types does not have an out-of-box data migration path; choosing the fit early avoids treating a future transition as a trivial upgrade.
04
Build the demo around a complete project
Braintree can map the project lifecycle and configure the selected scope around the way work is sold and delivered. The demonstration should follow one representative project from estimate to reviewable invoice, including a resource change and an expense requiring approval.
Define quoting assumptions, project structures and approval of scope changes.
Agree resource skills, booking ownership and the relationship between staffing and project tasks.
Set time, expense and project-manager review responsibilities.
Confirm deployment type, finance integration and the records required for billing and management reporting.
BEFORE YOU DECIDE
