Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Know-Account Projects
Steve Kirk is Director, SGK Consulting.
Business-as-usual financial processes don’t address the unique realities of managing project costs. Here are some project accounting best practices, which can help bring project managers, sponsors, clients and the company bean counters closer to one version of the truth.
When I was managing a portfolio of projects at my last employer, the most stressful moments came not when I was eyeball to eyeball with the customer in a project meeting but when I was in management meetings with our finance director. Don’t get me wrong, he was a nice enough chap and we got on famously, but it often seemed we were talking about different projects, such was the chasm between our respective views.
You see, as a project/program manager, my focus was on getting things done: problem solving, managing work, planning. My finance director was more worried about tracking the money: recognizing revenue, absorbing costs and forecasting the final impact on the company’s bank account.
Nothing surprising about that, but the way we worked and the systems we used reflected our own goals; trying to reconcile them was virtually impossible. It did appear that we had two versions of the truth.
I’m sure my experience isn’t unique. Many organizations aren’t designed to work in a project-centric way. So where are you likely to stumble …
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