As part of our marketing process we receive lumpsum funding from our vendors/ partners - ie someone may give us $100,000 to drive marketing on their product/ portfolio for the fiscal year. (could be ads, training materials, product offers, etc) The money either resides with us or the vendor, and we then create promotions or marketing initiatives against those fund. With a lot of vendors and initiatives going on, it is easy to lose track of funding as well as projects executed.
Thus, here is what I am looking to build. I would love to have one portfolio called "Vendor Programs", in the portfolio we would then have projects for each vendor. Each project would then contain an entry with the funds allocated/ available and we then track initiatives and billing. (in essence this would be our marketing budget portfolio, listing all of the budgeted and incremental funds we have for marketing initiatives). Easy so far, but a specific vendor spend might be related to other projects ie our Magazine and I may charge a vendor $5,000 for an ad to support that project. (that income is then recorded in the appropriate project - and each of our projects has a income and expense tracking - ie our magazine has income from ads, but expense for photography and print)
So question - is there a way to cross charge projects so that I do not have to do duplicate entries? Ie in the magazine project I want to be able to indicate that we need to bill vendor 12345 for $10,000 for an ad and indicate that this amount should be deducted against the balance in the "Vendor Programs" portfolio and or project? When I do that the vendor project would then show an expense equal to the income on the magazine project.
Hope this makes sense? Anyone have a great solution? Eric Cronert VP Marketing and Merchandising Reinhart Foodservice L.L.C.
