Union Square Launches New Project Accounting Functionality

Online, March 19, 2010 (Newswire.com) - Union Square Software has developed a suite of project financials software for Architects, Consultants and Consulting Engineers to enable them to monitor and control project and practice wide financial performance. The Workspace Project Accounting software includes a range of tools to enable online, financial management and ledger integration to deliver a unified view of actual and forecast costs and revenues, profitability and work in progress information.

Since the product launch at the end of 2009 seven practices - Stephen George and Partners, Unit Architects, JCMT, Howard Ward Associates, Skelly & Couch, Hawkins, and Optimum Consultancy - have adopted Workspace Project Accounting. The financial management software includes functionality for project set up and administration; timesheets and expenses management; fee budgeting; resourcing and invoicing; project profitability and performance; finance systems integration and project and practice reporting. Workspace Project Accounting can be used in conjunction with both the full Workspace system and Workspace mini.

James Ward comments on Howard Ward Associates decision to implement Workspace and Project Accounting: "The strength of the core Workspace product alongside the Project Accounting modules and integration to Sage meant that Workspace stood out from its competitors. It was the only system we reviewed that could fully integrate all the information sources in the business. When we are live, Workspace Project Accounting will give us complete visibility of the financial performance of jobs enabling us to closely monitor where overspends are occurring and reallocate resource appropriately."

Unit are implementing Workspace mini and Workspace Project Accounting to remove the prolonged manual processes that exist for timesheet submission and resource management. Workspace will reduce the time architects need to spend on administrative duties and give them centralised access to information, enabling them to work more efficiently and focus on design.

Stephen George and Partners have recently gone live with Workspace Project Accounting which replaced PROJECTminder and various spreadsheets in the practice. Managing Partner Micheal Barker comments, "Workspace Project Accounting has centralised project financial information, giving fast and easy access from wherever you are located. Before Workspace we were constantly chasing people to complete tasks, now those that are responsible for projects can view live on their Workspace home page what is outstanding. What's more, the information is easy to enter and the value of entering the information is much more aparrent, ensuring data is entered faster and everyone benefits instantly from access to current data. Processes in the practice have been streamlined by integrating all the practices information through Workspace, for example instructions for raising invoices are passed to the accounts department instantaneously through Workspace."

In association with the Project Accounting module, Union Square have become a member of the Sage Development Programme. This provides Union Square with all the tools and resources needed to enable deep integration to a number of Sage products.

Director Will Yandell comments, "The new Project Accounting functionality gives us a much more complete product offering for professional services businesses and enables us to bring more business processes under the Workspace umbrella. With the integration work that is possible with Sage and other accounts packages every piece of practice information can be accessed through Workspace.