As business timelines shorten, the use of project or job cost accounting becomes more important. I agree that software designed for construction has many other uses, in that it allows for labour, materials and overhead to be allocated, along with flexible revenue recognition.

In my field of nonprofit / charity accounting, this is particularly true. Funders want reports on the use of their money, separate from all other funding, as though each dollar has a flag attached to it. It is increasingly rare that a funder will sign on for a multi-year funding arrangement, so it is important that the system can produce reports independent of the fiscal year.

In my experience, project accounting is a much more flexible tool that will increasingly replace fund accounting for charities. In fact, a “fund” can be treated as a long term “project”.