Government contractors face a tangle of contract rules, cost allocations, billing cycles, and audit requirements that plain bookkeeping software cannot handle. Deltek Costpoint is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system specifically designed for these exact needs. It can track project costs, automate contract accounting, and keep compliance data audit-ready.
Firms like NeoSystems act as specialists, configuring and managing the system, so organizations implement useful financial controls. Understanding how the platform organizes contract accounting and where a partner can fill gaps is what lets you turn complex requirements into day-to-day business processes.
What Is Deltek Costpoint, and How Does It Help With Accounting?
Deltek Costpoint is an ERP software made specifically for government contractors. Unlike general finance software, this system is designed around the rules and reporting requirements that govern contract work, featuring:
- Cost accounting
- DCAA-friendly audit trails
- Labor tracking
- Indirect-rate management
- Contract billing
Because it focuses on project-level costs and compliance, many firms consider it the “gold standard” for contract-focused finance teams. Costpoint brings project management, financials, time and expense, procurement and reporting into one place, so teams work from the same dataset. That unified view makes it easier to allocate labor and overhead correctly, automate invoicing and generate government-ready reports.
The result is tighter cost control, fewer manual reconciliations and faster defensible billing. This platform is highly powerful and configurable, making it ideal for complex organizations. However, it also means implementations can be involved, which is why many contractors work with specialized consultants for setup and ongoing support.
5 Ways Deltek Costpoint Transforms Accounting for Government Contractors
Deltek Costpoint turns fragmented project and financial data into a single, auditable system in the following ways.
1. Streamlined Project Accounting
Deltek Costpoint tracks costs, budgets, and revenue at the project level so you can tie every dollar back to the job that earned it. Timecards, expenses, materials, and purchase orders flow into a single project ledger, which makes it simple to see actual versus budget and identify overruns and earned value.
Records are structured around contracts and cost pools, so the software also enforces the accounting rules government auditors expect. Those standards help you produce defensible invoices and reports without rebuilding data by hand.
2. Centralized Financial Management
Centralized financial management in Deltek Costpoint means your general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, payroll, and procurement feed a single source of trust, avoiding silos. When timecards and purchase orders all post to the same system, reconciliations become faster, and finance leaders can trust the reports they use to make decisions.
Unified data also improves cash flow visibility and forecasting. AR aging, committed costs, and cash requirements are visible by project and at the company level. Additionally, because the platform ties transactional details to the ledger, auditors obtain clearer, auditable trails, saving time and reducing the risk of misstatements.
3. Automated Labor and Time Tracking
Deltek Costpoint automates timekeeping with built-in timecard entry, approval workflows and validation rules, enabling more accurate labor records. Since employees can enter their hours through the system and have them automatically processed, this reduces manual entry errors and enforces charging rules. As a result, each hour posts to the correct project, task, and cost pool.
When entries feed directly into payroll and the project ledger, labor costs are captured as project-level amounts rather than rough estimates. The outcome is more precise job costing and better visibility into where labor spend is trending. Such improvements enable you to spot overruns sooner and produce timesheet trails.
4. Integrated Inventory and Materials Management
Costpoint’s inventory and materials module ties every purchase order and receipt back to the job that needs it. Instead of sitting in a warehouse, your materials are allocated to specific projects. The system handles the order process and automatically updates project ledgers when stock is moved or consumed. This feature gives you real-time visibility into committed versus available inventory.
This high-end visibility is crucial for bookkeeping and bidding. When material costs post cleanly to the correct job, your actual cost-of-goods and work-in-progress calculations are more accurate. This ability makes estimates and future bids more defensible. It also reduces write-offs and prevents lost parts from inflating margins, allowing you to price work more effectively.
5. Simplified Audits and Compliance
Since the system is built around government-contract accounting rules, Costpoint creates the exact records auditors want to see. It offers transaction-level detail, automated indirect-rate calculations, clear allowability flags and immutable audit logs. Those controls reduce the risk of mischarging and make it easier to justify cost classifications.
Reporting and document management reinforce that capability. Its preconfigured reports, searchable attachments, and drill-down analytics let you pull a defensible package of evidence quickly. When preparing for a review, teams experience fewer surprises and are better equipped to demonstrate compliance.
The Challenge of Gaining Costpoint’s Full Potential
Powerful ERP systems can be complex to implement. With Deltek Costpoint, you get dozens of modules, configurable ledgers, difficult cost-pool rules, and granular security settings. While this depth of features gives contractors precise control, it also creates a steep undertaking. Aside from the significant upfront cost, it can facilitate lengthy project timelines, configuration tie-ups and testing, and change management before you see streamlined reporting.
It can be even more demanding post-launch. Ongoing maintenance, periodic upgrades, optimization and regular staff training all require time and budget. Without them, the system drifts from best practice and the benefits erode. Unless you plan for steady governance and engage specialists to handle the setup, it can be frustrating. Otherwise, teams must manage it well to ensure compliance and improve financial visibility.
How NeoSystems Maximizes Your Costpoint Investment
NeoSystems steps in where Costpoint’s depth becomes a roadblock. It ensures the platform delivers predictable outcomes so you get the controls and reporting the ERP promises without the guesswork.
Unmatched Expertise and Experience
Founded in 2000, NeoSystems brings years of experience with Costpoint and government-contract bookkeeping. Its consultants have worked through multiple versions of the system and common edge cases, as many are former CFOs or senior financial leaders. As a result, they have seen the pitfalls and know the proven fixes. This institutional knowledge speeds implementations and reduces the lessons learned you would otherwise pay for later.
A Custom Consulting Approach
NeoSystems does not force a one-size-fits-all template. It starts with discovery by mapping your contracts, billing rules, internal processes and more. Then, it defines the best practices and configures to support them. This personalization includes security roles, cost-pool setups, approval workflows and user training, making the system more usable.
Managed Services for a Hands-Off Experience
If you prefer to avoid the operational burden, NeoSystems can run Costpoint on your behalf and handle all administrative and maintenance tasks. That allows your financial team to focus on analysis and compliance, rather than day-to-day system care, while maintaining tight controls.
Proactive Upgrade and Optimization Strategy
Long-term value appears in upgrades and ongoing optimization. NeoSystems helps clients build an “upgrade strategy” to minimize disruption and phase change so users feel less overwhelmed. Regular health checks and process reviews keep the system aligned with evolving contracts, enabling the tools to deliver continuous benefits.
Taking the Full Advantage of Deltek Costpoint
Deltek Costpoint is the gold standard ERP for government contractors because it integrates all aspects of accounting into a single system. Its depth drives better cost control and faster invoicing, but those gains only appear when organizations invest in proper configuration.
Partnering with specialists like NeoSystems helps smaller teams avoid implementation pitfalls and realize the software’s benefits sooner. With the right plan and support, Costpoint becomes the backbone of more predictable financial performance.
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