A principal usually doesn’t open Deltek Vantagepoint just to look at data. There is usually a question behind it.

Which projects need attention this week? Why is this project’s financial position changing? What does the contract say about that requirement? Is there anything unusual sitting in the approval queue?

Getting to those answers has often involved some combination of reports, dashboards, project records, conversations with PMs, and requests to finance or operations.

Deltek Vantagepoint 2026.2 and Ask Dela give principals another way to get to that information.

In this blog, we’ll look at what that means in practice for A&E principals, including how project reviews, financial questions, contract lookups, approvals, and everyday use of Vantagepoint may change with Ask Dela and the 2026.2 release.

1. Approvals Can Put More Attention on the Exceptions

Expense approvals are one of the routine tasks principals may handle throughout the week. Most are straightforward, but some require a closer look at company policy, supporting documentation, or the reason behind the expense.

Vantagepoint 2026.2 adds Dela-powered Company Policy Insights and Natural Language Insights for expense report approval workflows.

Firms can upload policy documents, connect them to workflow steps, and have Dela analyze submitted expenses against those policies and other configured criteria.

That gives the approver more context before making the decision.

The principal still decides whether the expense should be approved.

There may be a perfectly valid reason for an exception, and the system will not have every piece of business context. What it can do is make the unusual item easier to spot.

That helps the principal spend more attention where it is warranted instead of giving every report the same level of initial scrutiny.

One expense report may only save a little time. Across months of approvals, that routine checking adds up.

2. Financial Questions Do Not Always Need a New Report

A project review may show that one job is underperforming, and the next question comes almost immediately:

Are any of our other projects doing the same thing?

Historically, that question could turn into another reporting task. Someone might need to find the right report, choose the right group of projects, adjust filters, run it, and come back with the answer later.

Vantagepoint 2026.2 adds an opt-in Ask Dela capability for aggregate project financial questions. Because it can work across groups of projects using Project Reporting Summary data, principals can ask broader questions without staying tied to a single project record.

That could include questions like:

• Which projects have the lowest margins?
• Which projects have the largest gap between earned and invoiced amounts?
• How are projects in a particular office performing?
• Which projects meet a certain financial condition?
• Are several projects showing the same issue?

That matters most when the question was not part of the original report.

A dashboard may tell leadership what they planned to review that week. Ask Dela can help with the question that comes five minutes later because someone noticed something interesting in the data.

Instead of sending another request to finance or operations, the principal may be able to keep digging while the issue is still being discussed.

That does not remove the need for regular Vantagepoint reporting. Leadership still needs consistent measures that can be reviewed week after week. Ask Dela gives principals another option for questions that do not fit neatly into the standard report.

The quality of those answers also depends on the information available inside Vantagepoint. If important project, CRM, payroll, or other operational data lives elsewhere, the firm may also need to consider how its Vantagepoint integrations support the information principals expect to use.

3. A Contract Question May Stay a Five-Minute Question

Contract questions often come up in the middle of other work. A client may ask about a requirement, a PM may need to confirm whether something falls within scope, or a principal may want to check a term before deciding how to respond.

Without a quick way to get to the right language, a small question can turn into a much longer search.

Someone has to find the correct agreement, check for amendments, search several possible terms, read the surrounding language, and sometimes ask another person to help locate the right section.

Ask Dela gives the principal or PM a different starting point.

Users can select supported contract documents from Vantagepoint and ask questions about their contents. Supported formats include text-based PDFs, Word documents, RTF files, and TXT files.

So the principal can begin with the actual business question:

• What does the agreement say about additional services?
• Where is this obligation addressed?
• What amount is listed for this part of the contract?
• Does the agreement mention this requirement?

That can be useful right before a client call, during a project discussion, or when a scope issue comes up unexpectedly.

The source contract still matters. If the issue carries legal or commercial weight, the actual language should be reviewed and legal counsel may need to be involved.

For day-to-day information retrieval, Ask Dela can help the principal get to the relevant section much faster.

That is the difference between a quick question staying quick and turning into a small research project.

4. Weekly Project Reviews Can Start With the Projects That Need Attention

Most A&E firms already have some kind of recurring project review, and a lot of the work happens before the meeting ever starts.

Someone has to look across the active portfolio, review financials, check billing, compare what has been earned against what has been spent, and figure out which projects are worth bringing to the table.

That may fall to the principal, the PM, finance, or some combination of the three.

If nobody spots an issue ahead of time, it may stay out of the conversation until the numbers become hard to ignore.

Dela’s Project Management Insights gives firms another way to identify those issues earlier.

Vantagepoint reviews project data nightly and looks at the relationship between earned, invoiced, and spent amounts. It then surfaces the three most critical issues it identifies for a project and provides context around why they may need attention.

For a principal, that could mean seeing that spending is moving faster than earned value, invoicing is falling behind the work, or another financial relationship looks unusual enough to warrant a closer look.

What the Review Can Look Like Now

A principal or PM may have traditionally needed to:

• Work through a long list of active projects
• Scan dashboards for unusual movement
• Compare several financial measures
• Depend on the PM to raise a concern
• Wait until the next review to discuss it

With Project Management Insights, the team can come into the meeting with specific issues already surfaced.

That gives the discussion a much better starting point. Instead of spending the first part of the review deciding what is worth talking about, the team can get into questions like:

• Why is this project burning through cost faster than expected?
• Is billing lagging because of timing, scope, or process?
• Is the variance temporary?
• Does the PM need help?
• Does the client need to be involved?

The nightly analysis also matters between meetings. If a project starts moving in the wrong direction on Tuesday, the principal does not have to depend entirely on Friday’s report or next week’s review to find out.

That gives the team more time to investigate while there are still more options available.

5. Vantagepoint Can Require Less System Knowledge From the Principal

Some of the friction principals experience in Vantagepoint comes from knowing where to go.

They may know exactly what they want to ask without knowing which report contains the answer, which screen to open, which filter was used last time, or what to click when one answer creates another question.

That is easier for project accountants, controllers, and other people who work inside the system every day.

Principals usually come into Vantagepoint with a narrower purpose. They need to check a project, approve something, review a number, or answer a contract question. Some of those common tasks can also be handled away from a desk through the Deltek Vantagepoint mobile app.

Vantagepoint 2026.2 includes the optional Harmony user experience, which introduces updated navigation, revised icons, fly-out menus, and a right-side Context Menu that brings together Ask Dela, Dela Insights, notifications, and help.

For a principal, that can reduce some of the jumping between screens. They can review a project, see an insight, ask a related question, and continue working from the same area.

How firms introduce capabilities like these also matters. A 2026 survey of 501 AEC professionals found substantial differences in AI familiarity, use, training, and organizational readiness across the industry.

That is relevant for firms adopting Ask Dela because the people using Vantagepoint do not all come to the system with the same habits or level of technical familiarity.

For principals in particular, fewer menu changes, fewer searches for the right report, and fewer detours to find supporting information can make a noticeable difference when Vantagepoint is something they use in short bursts throughout the week rather than all day.

What Deltek Vantagepoint 2026.2 and Ask Dela Actually Changes for the Principal?

For principals, Vantagepoint 2026.2 can reduce some of the time spent looking for information across projects, financials, contracts, and approvals. Project issues may surface sooner, financial questions can be answered without another reporting request, contract details are easier to retrieve, and approval exceptions are easier to identify.

That gives principals more immediate access to the information they need during the course of the week, especially when questions come up outside of a scheduled review or report cycle.

For firms still working in Deltek Vision, these new capabilities also give leadership another reason to look closely at where the firm stands in its move to Vantagepoint. BCS ProSoft can help plan a Deltek Vision to Vantagepoint upgrade around the firm’s existing projects, reporting, approvals, and other core workflows.

For firms already using Vantagepoint, BCS ProSoft can look at how principals, PMs, and finance teams are working today and where Ask Dela, Project Management Insights, approval workflows, reporting, and the broader Deltek implementation could better support that work.

That is the useful way to look at Vantagepoint 2026.2. Find the places where principals are still waiting on reports, hunting through documents, reviewing routine items, or chasing down project context, and see which of those tasks can now happen faster.

Key Takeaways

• Deltek Vantagepoint 2026.2 and Ask Dela gives principals faster access to project, financial, contract, and approval information through Ask Dela and Dela Insights.
• Project Management Insights can surface critical project issues earlier, giving principals and PMs more time to investigate financial drift before the next formal review.
• Ask Dela can answer aggregate financial questions across groups of projects, which can reduce the number of one-off report requests sent to finance or operations.
• Contract document chat and Dela Approval Insights can cut down the time spent searching agreements, checking policy details, and reviewing routine expense items.
• The biggest impact of Deltek Vantagepoint 2026.2 and Ask Dela is in the smaller tasks surrounding leadership decisions, helping principals get to the information they need with fewer manual steps.

Frequently Asked Questions