This article is a guide to setup the configuration required to generate labor cost plans based on the resource assignments using the new attribute based resource management for projects, demands and epics.
As part of the next experience for SPM Applications, new attribute-based model is introduced for Resource management and Capacity planning which gives greater flexibility for organizations to manage resources and do capacity planning. The attribute-based model also applies to the financials generated based on the resource assignments done to a project, demand, epic and other planning items (being planned to be supported in future).
The attribute-based labor costs generation enables organizations to track costs by the breakdown of attributes that are important for the reporting needs.
Following are two examples of the use cases which the new model supports and were something which the legacy resource management and cost plans did not support:
- Enable organizations to categorize the tasks the resources are assigned to as Capex or Opex and automatically generate the labor cost plans with the respective expense type.
- Differentiate internal/external resources and generate cost plans with Internal labor or External labor cost types automatically based on the resource profile
For organizations to leverage this new attribute-based labor costs model, the primary requirement is to move from the legacy resource plan model to the new attribute-based resource model supported in the 'New project workspace' which leverage the 'resource assignments'.
Following is the list of the major configurations specific to financials, that are needed to be setup for the labor costs to be generated as per the organizations needs from the resource assignments done to the Demands, Projects or Epics:
- Configure Planning attributes
- Create New Planning Attribute
- Configure Employee profiles
- Configure a rate model for the resource rates
- Configure the default expense type of new work items
- Configuring Scheduled job for generating labor costs for active projects and epics automatically
Configure planning attributes for attribute-based labor costs generation:
For the labor costs to be generated based on the resource assignments in the new project workspace, the first configuration that needs to be done is the financials attribute configuration in the ‘Planning attributes’ module.
Navigation:
- Employee type, role and expense type are the default planning attributes enabled for financials out of the box. That means cost plans are generated broken down by the combination of these 3 attributes.
- Employee type and role are resource attributes which are based on user profile and referenced from the 'Employee profile' table
- Expense type is a task attribute which is referenced from the pm_project, pm_project_task, dmn_demand tables and other task tables on which resource assignments are going to be done.
- These attributes need to be mapped to the respective field in the ‘cost_plan’ table for the labor costs to be generated automatically based on the attribute values of the resources assigned
- Following is the screenshot of the ‘Expense Type’ attribute which is available out of the box as a financial planning attribute:
Creating new planning attributes:
- New planning attributes can be created of both ‘Resource’ and ‘Task’ type as per the requirement of the customer organization using the ‘New planning attribute’ form.
- To generate labor costs based on other resource type attributes, select ‘Attribute type’ as ‘Resource’, select attribute table as ‘Employee Profile’ and set the ‘Attribute field’ with the user attribute of your choice (for example ‘Location’).
- To generate labor costs based on a ‘Task’ type attribute, select ‘Attribute type’ as ‘Task’, enter the Attribute name, select the Task attribute table and field (for ex: pm_project and expense_type)
- Check ‘Enable for financials’ option. If it is a ‘Resource’ Type attribute, ‘Enable for resource management’ option is also checked as all financial attributes should also be available on the resource management for generate labor costs.
- Check ‘Active’ option and Submit
- Re-open the newly created planning attribute and map the ‘planning attribute column configurations’. This is to map the columns in the look up tables like cost_plan which contain the planning attribute fields that are required for generating the labor cost plans.
- Please refer the following example of a new planning attribute of type ‘Resource’ created for configuring ‘location’ as a financial attribute to generate labor costs based on the resource location
Configure Employee profiles:
Please make sure to keep the Employee profile table updated with the financial user attributes ‘Role’ and ‘Employee Type’ or any new financial planning attributes of type 'Resource' for the labor cost plans to be created considering the rate and effort of the employees from the resource assignments broken down by the respective attributes.
Configure a rate model for the resource rates:
Make sure to create a rate model with the resource rates as per the following documentation - https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/vancouver-it-business-management/page/product/project-portfolio-s...
Note: Please note that the rate model currently works only with demands and projects. If you are using resource assignments for Epics, labor rate cards or group rates need to be created for the respective users or groups for the cost plans to be generated with the correct rate. Otherwise, system will consider the default rate for the cost calculation.
Configure the default expense type of new work items:
- A new ‘Expense Type’ field is added to the Demand, Project, Project Task, Epic and SAFe Epic tables.
- As it is defaulted to ‘Opex’ out of the box, every new project or demand will have ‘Opex’ as the Expense Type.
- The default Expense Type value can be modified following the below steps:
- Navigate to All > System Properties > All properties.
- Filter the name to locate and open the ‘sn_plng_att_core.default.expense_type’ property.
- Change the Value field to the required expense type (‘capex’ or ‘opex’) and select Save.
Configuring Scheduled job for generating labor costs for active projects and epics automatically:
- Navigate to ‘All > System Definition > Scheduled Jobs’ and filter the name of job ‘Generate labor costs’.
- Open the ‘Generate labor costs’ job and configure the ‘Run’ frequency to automatically generate the labor costs for all active projects based on the resource assignments done on them as per the frequency of choice for your organization. (Note: This job is being planned to be updated to automate generate of labor costs for active demands too in the Feb ’24 release)
- Use the ‘Generate labor costs for Epic’ jobs to automatically generate the labor costs for all active Epic records based on the resource assignments done on them as per the frequency of choice for your organization.
Using Attribute based labor costs generation:
After the above configuration is done, you are ready to generate labor costs based on the resource assignments done for work item like project in the project workspace or demands and epics in the Strategic planning workspace.
Consider the following project named ‘Global Benefits Management’ with resource assignments created by Role.
On Navigating to the ‘Financials tab’ and selecting ‘Generate labor costs’, labor cost plans are successfully created based on the Role, Employee Type and Expense Type of the resource assignments.
