Project-Based ERP

Control Project Costs, Resources, Revenue and Delivery in One Platform

OneBusiness ERP helps project-based organisations manage the complete project lifecycle — from feasibility, planning and budgeting through execution, billing, settlement and financial reporting.

Project managers, finance teams and executives gain a shared view of project costs, resources, milestones, progress, revenue and profitability. Instead of managing projects through disconnected spreadsheets and applications, OneBusiness connects project delivery directly with financial accounting, procurement, inventory, CRM, HR and payroll.

Plan Accurately. Control Costs. Use Resources Effectively. Deliver Profitable Projects.

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Explore Project Management Capabilities
PLATFORM

One system, from feasibility to settlement

Many project tools stop at tasks and schedules. OneBusiness goes further — connecting operational delivery with financial and commercial control, so project managers, finance teams and executives work from the same numbers.

  • Create and structure projects
  • Develop project cost plans
  • Schedule activities and milestones
  • Plan internal and external resources
  • Procure materials and monitor commitments
  • Measure physical and financial progress
  • Bill customers per project agreement
  • Settle costs to the right financial object
Who It's For

Built for organisations that deliver through projects

OneBusiness is suitable for organisations that deliver work through projects, contracts, engagements or client assignments, including: 

Engineering & construction

Professional services

IT & software implementation

Consulting

Government contractors

Infrastructure & maintenance

Architecture & design

Labour-hire & workforce services

Research & grant-funded orgs

Manufacturing projects

Property development

Not-for-profit programs

Internal capital-project teams

Features

Project Management Capabilities

Set objectives, monitor performance in real time, and keep every compliance obligation under control.

Project Dashboard

The project dashboard provides a consolidated view of project performance and helps managers identify projects that require attention.

Depending on configuration, the dashboard can display:

  • Project status and completion percentage
  • Budget, commitments and actual costs
  • Planned and actual revenue
  • Cost and schedule variances
  • Upcoming milestones
  • Outstanding tasks
  • Resource utilisation
  • Billing status
  • Forecast cost at completion
  • Project profitability
  • Risks, issues and exceptions

Executives can review the project portfolio while project managers can examine individual projects in greater detail. 

Project Creation and Governance

Create projects using standard classifications, templates and approval rules. Each project can contain its own commercial, operational and financial information.

Project records can include:

  • Project name and description
  • Customer or internal sponsor
  • Project manager
  • Business unit and responsible department
  • Planned start and completion dates
  • Project category and priority
  • Contract value
  • Billing method
  • Currency and tax treatment
  • Cost and revenue budgets
  • Financial assignment information

Consistent project setup improves reporting quality and reduces errors later in the project lifecycle. 

Project Phases

Organise projects into phases that reflect the actual delivery methodology. Phases may represent discovery, design, procurement, implementation, testing, commissioning, support or other business-specific stages.

Project phases help teams:

  • Organise work logically
  • Assign ownership
  • Allocate budgets
  • Schedule activities
  • Required evidence
  • Track phase-level costs
  • Measure progress
  • Control approvals
  • Compare planned and actual performance
  • Escalation of overdue items

This provides more meaningful project control than monitoring only the overall project total. 

Project Structure

Use a hierarchical project structure to divide a project into phases, work packages, activities and cost-control elements. 

A structured project model supports: 

  • Detailed planning and accountability
  • Budget allocation
  • Cost collection
  • Resource assignment
  • Purchasing and inventory consumption
  • Time recording
  • Progress calculation
  • Customer billing
  • Management reporting
  • Project settlement

Project managers can monitor performance at the level required without losing visibility of the complete project. 

Tasks and Checklists

Create tasks for individual users, teams or external participants. Tasks can be linked to project phases, milestones and work packages. 

Task management can include: 

  • Task owner
  • Start and due dates
  • Priority
  • Status
  • Planned effort
  • Actual time
  • Dependencies
  • Supporting documents
  • Comments and updates
  • Completion evidence

Reusable checklists help ensure that important procedural, quality and compliance activities are completed consistently. 

Project Milestones

Define operational and financial milestones to monitor major project achievements. 

Milestones can represent: 

  • Design approval
  • Customer acceptance
  • Material delivery
  • Phase completion
  • Testing and commissioning
  • Regulatory approval
  • Billing eligibility
  • Supporting documents
  • Contractual payment events
  • Final handover

Milestone monitoring gives management early visibility of delays that could affect project delivery, billing or cash flow. 

Project Scheduling

Create project schedules that connect tasks, phases, resources and milestones. 

Scheduling capabilities support: 

  • Planned start and finish dates
  • Task duration
  • Activity dependencies
  • Project calendars
  • Critical delivery dates
  • Resource availability
  • Schedule revisions
  • Planned-versus-actual comparisons
  • Delay identification
  • Completion forecasting

Integrated scheduling helps teams understand how changes in one activity may affect resources, milestones and the final delivery date. 

Project Cost Planning

Prepare detailed project cost plans before work begins. Budgets can be developed by phase, task, cost category, resource, material or reporting period. 

Cost plans can include: 

 

  • Employee and contractor labour
  • Materials and inventory
  • Equipment
  • Travel and expenses
  • Subcontractors
  • Professional services
  • Overheads
  • Contingency
  • Other direct and indirect costs

Approved cost plans provide the baseline for commitment control, variance analysis and project forecasting. 

Project Resource Planning

Plan employees, contractors, equipment and other resources according to project requirements. 

Resource planning supports: 

  • Role and skill requirements
  • Employee availability
  • Planned working hours
  • Resource cost rates
  • Assignment periods
  • Capacity analysis
  • Resource conflicts
  • Utilisation monitoring
  • Contractor requirements

This helps organisations balance project demand with available capacity and identify resource gaps before they affect delivery. 

Lean Project Resource Planning

For organisations that do not require highly detailed resource scheduling, OneBusiness supports lean resource planning.

Managers can estimate resource requirements at a higher level by:

  • Project phase
  • Role
  • Skill category
  • Team
  • Department
  • Reporting period
  • Planned effort
  • Estimated resource cost

Lean planning offers faster preparation while preserving visibility of overall demand, capacity and projected labour costs. 

My Tasks

Each user can access a personalised list of project tasks and responsibilities. 

The workspace can show :

  • Current assignments
  • Upcoming tasks
  • Overdue work
  • Task priorities
  • Milestone-related activities
  • Planned effort
  • Time recorded
  • Pending approvals
  • Required checklist items

This reduces uncertainty and helps employees focus on the work that requires immediate attention. 

Project Working Days and Calendars

Define project calendars that consider working days, weekends, public holidays, shutdown periods and project-specific availability.

Calendars help improve:

  • Activity scheduling
  • Duration calculation
  • Resource planning
  • Milestone forecasting
  • Time-sheet validation
  • Duration calculation
  • Delivery-date estimation

Different calendars can be maintained for locations, project teams, customers or operational environments. 

Financial Control

Project Financial Management

Connect budgets, commitments, revenue and settlement directly to financial accounting.

Project Cost Control

OneBusiness connects financial and procurement transactions to the relevant project, phase or work package. 

Project cost control can include: 

  • Approved budget
  • Purchase requisitions
  • Purchase orders and commitments
  • Supplier invoices
  • Employee time costs
  • Expenses
  • Inventory issues
  • Equipment costs
  • Accruals
  • Actual expenditure
  • Remaining budget
  • Forecast final cost

Managers can identify variances while corrective action is still possible. 

Cost Forecasting

Cost forecasting combines the approved budget, actual expenditure, commitments, progress and estimated remaining work. 

Forecast reporting can provide: 

  • Actual cost to date
  • Committed cost
  • Estimate to complete
  • Estimate at completion
  • Budget variance at completion
  • Cost-performance trends
  • Potential overrun alerts
  • Forecast changes between reporting periods
  • Distance and duration

Regular forecasting helps prevent late discovery of project losses. 

Demand Forecasting

Project demand forecasting converts planned activities into expected requirements for materials, services, equipment and other resources. 

This allows procurement and operations teams to: 

  • Plan purchases earlier
  • Consolidate project demand
  • Check available inventory
  • Avoid material shortages
  • Reduce emergency purchasing
  • Coordinate supplier delivery dates
  • Improve working-capital planning
  • Identify long-lead-time requirements

Forecast demand can flow into procurement and inventory-planning processes. 

Revenue Planning

Prepare project revenue plans based on contracts, schedules, milestones, expected progress or billing arrangements. 

Revenue planning can support: 

  • Contract-value allocation
  • Period-based revenue plans
  • Milestone billing
  • Time-and-material billing
  • Fixed-price billing
  • Planned invoices
  • Revenue recognition requirements
  • Planned-versus-actual revenue analysis
  • Unbilled revenue monitoring

Connecting revenue plans with project delivery gives management a more realistic view of future financial performance. 

Project Settlement Rules

Settlement rules determine how project financial values are transferred to the appropriate accounting destination. 

Depending on business requirements, project values can be assigned to: 

 

  • Customer contracts
  • Cost centres
  • Profit centres
  • Assets under construction
  • Fixed assets
  • Internal orders
  • Departments
  • Business units
  • Other financial objects

Defined rules improve consistency and reduce manual work during financial close. 

Project Settlement

Project settlement processes accumulated costs and revenue according to approved rules and accounting requirements. 

Settlement helps organisations: 

  • Transfer eligible project costs
  • Capitalise qualifying expenditure
  • Allocate internal project costs
  • Finalise completed projects
  • Support period-end closing
  • Maintain financial traceability
  • Capitalise qualifying expenditure
  • Improve audit readiness

Users can review settlement results and exceptions before final posting. 

Posting Journal Entries

Authorised users can create or review journal entries associated with a project. This supports adjustments, accruals, allocations and other project-related accounting requirements. 

Integration with financial accounting provides: 

  • Consistent account assignment
  • Project-level transaction traceability
  • Reduced duplicate data entry
  • Controlled posting approvals
  • Real-time financial reporting
  • Clear audit trails

Finance and project teams work from the same underlying transaction data. 

AI Intelligence

Reviewed by your project managers, not run around them

Every AI output is designed to be checked and approved before it reaches a customer or a ledger.

A-01

Monthly Project Reports

Progress, cost position, milestone status, risks and priorities — drafted for the manager to review and approve.

A-02

Cost Forecasting

Flags likely overruns, high-risk work packages and cost pressure from budgets, commitments and timesheets.

 

A-03

Resource Forecasting

Matches the project pipeline against workforce capacity to surface shortages, gaps and conflicts early.

 

A-04

Meeting Notes & Actions

Converts notes and scans into decisions, action owners, dates and risks — recorded directly against the project.

 
 
Why It Matters

Benefits of OneBusiness ERP for Project-Based Organisations

Improve Project Profitability

Track costs, commitments, revenue and forecast margins throughout the project—not only after completion. 

Detect Problems Earlier

Use dashboards, forecasts, progress measures and exception reports to identify cost, schedule and resource risks. 

Reduce Spreadsheet Dependency

Maintain project structures, budgets, tasks, resources and financial information within one integrated system. 

Strengthen Financial Control

Connect project operations with purchasing, inventory, billing, accounting and settlement. 

Improve Resource Utilisation

Compare project demand with employee, contractor and equipment availability. 

Accelerate Monthly Reporting

Generate consistent project reporting using current operational and financial data. 

Improve Accountability

Assign tasks, milestones, checklists and actions to responsible users with due dates and status tracking. 

Support Better Decisions

Give executives, project managers and finance teams a consistent view of project performance. 

Management Reporting

OneBusiness provides project reporting for operational teams, finance teams and executives.

Available reports can include: 

Project portfolio summary

Budget-versus-actual report

Commitment and actual cost report

Project profitability

Cost forecast

Revenue forecast

Resource-demand forecast

Resource utilisation

Milestone status

Overdue tasks

Billing status

Unbilled project revenue

Progress report

S-curve analysis

Project variance report

Project settlement report

Project feasibility report

Data Management & Assurance

Frequently Asked Questions

What types of projects can OneBusiness manage?

OneBusiness can support customer projects, internal projects, capital projects, implementation projects, professional-service engagements, maintenance projects and grant- or donor-funded programs. 

Yes. Costs and revenue can be planned by project, phase, task, work package, resource, cost category and reporting period. 

Yes. Procurement commitments and supplier invoices can be assigned to the relevant project structure, providing visibility before and after expenditure is incurred. 

Yes. Employees and authorised contractors can record working time against projects, phases or tasks. The recorded time can support project costing, utilisation reporting and customer billing. 

Yes. OneBusiness can be configured for fixed-price, time-and-material, cost-reimbursable, milestone-based and internal project models. 

Yes. OneBusiness can calculate the estimate at completion using actual expenditure, commitments, project progress and the expected cost of remaining work. 

Eligible project costs can be settled to an asset under construction or another appropriate accounting object, subject to the organisation’s accounting policies and configuration. 

Yes. Available capabilities include AI-assisted monthly project reporting, project cost forecasting, resource forecasting and structured meeting-note generation. 

Yes. Role-based permissions can control who can create projects, approve budgets, view financial information, post transactions or perform settlement. 

Take control of every project

From feasibility to final settlement — better information, stronger controls, earlier visibility of risk.

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