From Bid to Bill: Closing the ASC 606 Revenue Recognition Gap for CROs

The Problem CROs Face

CROs run on more systems than they’d like. Project delivery is tracked in units, in one system. Pass-through costs and grant spend live in another. Time entry and resource management sit somewhere else entirely. When none of it connects, it’s hard to catch an overburning project early — before it’s already a costly one.

At the root of it is one simple issue: operational and financial data doesn’t live on one platform. So teams close the gap by hand: pulling numbers from a BI tool, updating a spreadsheet, matching actual cost to budgeted cost unit by unit. It works, but it’s exactly the kind of manual effort that shouldn’t be necessary.

The Solution at a Glance: Purpose Built for CROs

The solution starts with putting everything on one platform. Certinia’s PS Cloud, extended with CRO-specific functionality CLD built for unit tracking, pass-through and grant spend, billing, and revenue recognition allows project analysts and project finance to work in one place with the same set of numbers.

The impact is twofold: project teams report back to sponsors faster, and work that used to be manual — revenue recognition, billing, price reconciliations — is automated. One CRO, CTI Clinical Research and Consulting, saw sponsor reporting go from a manual, multi-system exercise to one click, with revenue recognition improving in both speed and accuracy.

“CLD demonstrated an understanding of how contract research organizations work (bidding for studies, tracking units delivered, recognizing revenue, creating internal reports, etc.)—and have helped us successfully migrate several hundred active projects.” — Louis Minham, Director / IT, CTI

In a recent event, Brian walked through the entire flow live: importing a bid, tracking units, staffing resources, reconciling price changes, and generating sponsor reports, all inside Certinia. Here’s what he demonstrated.

Demo Highlights

Bid Import — drag-and-drop bid workbook upload creates project hierarchy (parent + regional projects) and auto-generates resource requests from units/tasks sold. Then leveraging core Certinia functionality, its easy for PMs to begin staffing the roles that were bid using the resource requests. The staffing assignments are tied directly to unit role hours and timeframes.

Unit Tracking — the “heart and soul” of CRO delivery; spreadsheet-like UI for forecast vs. actuals, workflow from lead → PM → PA, notes/audit trail, variance flags

ASC 606 Full Rev Rec – supports percent-complete revenue recognition on full cost alongside unit-based rev rec, so both methods run side by side depending on the project

Price Reconciliation / Change Orders — upload a change file, system auto-updates units and generates reconciliation billing milestones — no manual spreadsheet calc

Sponsor Reporting — automated “Financial Summary” report (Conga template) covering invoicing, aging, pass-throughs, grants, unit budget-vs-actuals

Overburn/Underburn Reporting — project- and portfolio-level views by hours and cost, role, and region; home page dashboards for PAs

Key Takeaways

• 10–30% efficiency gains typically seen on project teams
• Single source of truth eliminates manual reconciliation across systems
• Scalable from project-level detail up to portfolio-level reporting

See it in Action

This is just a preview of what Brian covered live. To see how bid import, unit tracking, resource staffing, price reconciliation, and sponsor reporting work together in Certinia PSA, watch the demo!