MICROSOFT PRODUCT CAPABILITIES
See the financial position behind delivery.
Project Operations supports service projects as well as scenarios involving production and stocked items. The finance-led entry point focuses on how project transactions become costs, billing, and accounting records across the business.
Contracts and financial structure
Define how project work is priced and billed, with project responsibilities and financial dimensions aligned from the start.
Cost and approvals
Follow approved time, expenses, and other project costs against budgets and delivery progress.
Project accounting
Use the chosen ERP deployment to support project invoicing, work in progress, accruals, and revenue recognition requirements.
Manufacturing projects
For projects involving stocked items and production orders, connect project control to Finance and Supply Chain Management.
One product, different deployment models
Project Operations Core connects delivery to an external financial system. Integrated with ERP brings project delivery together with Dynamics 365 Finance. Manufacturing scenarios add the requirements of stocked items and production.
Put it to work with Braintree.
Braintree defines project accounting and integration requirements alongside delivery processes, then configures approvals, billing, and reporting so the financial records match the work performed.
01
Follow delivery into the financial result
The enterprise Project Operations decision is about how the delivery record becomes a financial record. A project team may know that work is complete while finance is still waiting for approved time, expense evidence or an explanation of an invoice adjustment. A connected implementation defines those handovers explicitly.
For example, an engineering firm may combine time-based consultancy, a fixed-price work package and material charges on one customer engagement. Each element affects the project estimate, approval process, billing and accounting differently. The application choice must reflect that mixture instead of assuming that one generic project template will fit every contract.
02
Accounting and production determine the deployment
Microsoft’s current deployment guidance distinguishes Core, Integrated with ERP and manufacturing scenarios. The finance-connected option supports customer invoicing and revenue recognition, while manufacturing scenarios address production orders and stocked materials. The required accounting and inventory behaviour should decide the architecture before the team configures operational records.
For an Integrated with ERP deployment, Microsoft documents Dataverse and finance-and-operations integration through dual-write. This introduces prerequisites, linked environments and map-version compatibility. The integration is a managed part of the implementation, not a background assumption that two applications will automatically exchange every record.
03
Review project facts before final invoicing
Microsoft distinguishes the project manager’s proforma review from the accounting process for the customer invoice. This separation matters when the delivery team understands the work but finance controls tax, posting and customer billing. The design must preserve both responsibilities and specify how corrections are made.
The acceptance test should follow an expense or time entry through approval, project actuals, invoice review and financial posting. Include a rejected entry, a non-billable adjustment and a project change. Those scenarios establish how the organisation keeps costing and billing aligned when the work does not follow the original estimate.
04
Agree the operating and financial model together
Braintree can scope project structures, resourcing, commercial terms and finance integration as one implementation. The project sponsor needs representation from delivery and finance so that a convenient operational shortcut does not create an accounting problem later.
Define contract types, pricing, cost categories and billing ownership.
Agree resource allocation, time and expense approval and subcontracting requirements.
Select the deployment using finance, inventory and production needs.
Confirm integration prerequisites, map compatibility and ownership of failed transactions.
Test project review, customer invoicing, correction and reporting through the complete lifecycle.
BEFORE YOU DECIDE
