Vinay3
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

We are excited to announce a new Financials tracking screen for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) users in ServiceNow's February 2025 Store Release. This feature empowers portfolio users to track and analyze financials in their portfolio plans effectively.

With this release, you can now view and compare costs and benefits across different time scales and categories, gaining real-time insights into approved budgets, forecasts, variances, actuals, and remaining estimates.

 

Financial rollups by Expense Type:

Vinay3_0-1741861805222.png

 

Financial Rollups by Cost Type:

Vinay3_1-1741861805227.png

 

Key Capabilities of the New Financials Screen

1. Flexible Time scale Breakdown

Users can view financial data for their portfolio plans in various breakdowns, including:

  • Total Portfolio Plan Timeline
  • Yearly, Quarterly, or Fiscal Period Views
  • Focused time ranges (e.g., a specific quarter)

2. Cost Breakdown by Expense Type or Cost Type

The financials screen supports viewing costs in two ways based on budget attribute configuration:

  • Expense Type View: Breaks down costs into Capital Expenditure (Capex) and Operational Expenditure (Opex).
  • Cost Type View: Provides a more granular breakdown, such as:
    • Software Capex, Software Opex
    • Hardware Capex, Hardware Opex
    • Labor Capex, Labor Opex, etc.

This feature is a huge advantage as it enables users to view aggregated rollups of budgets and forecasts by cost types, making financial analysis more detailed and insightful.

3. Real Time Financial Comparisons

  • Track latest forecasts vs. approved budgets
  • Identify variances and take action proactively
  • Monitor actuals and remaining estimates to stay within budget
  • Monitor the actual monetary benefits against the planned to track value realization

4. Drill down Capabilities:

  • Quickly navigate to cost plan details for each planning item (Demands, Projects, Epics) by clicking on the planning item name.
  • Perform deeper analysis of cost distributions and spending trends

5. Export Data for Additional Reporting:

  • Download financial data in Excel or CSV format for further analysis

How to Enable This Feature in Your Portfolio Plan

To activate this new Financials tracking screen in your existing Portfolio Plan, follow these steps:

  1. Run a scheduled job named 'Data generation for financials in PPW/SPW' once after the upgrade.
  2. Ensure that the Portfolio Plan Calendar Type is set to ‘Fiscal’.
  3. Confirm that your Portfolio Plan contains only Demands, Projects, or Epics as planning item types.

Once enabled, you can immediately start leveraging this powerful financial analysis capability to make data-driven portfolio decisions.

 

Get Started Today!

This new Financials screen provides a holistic and granular view of your portfolio costs, enabling smarter financial planning and execution. Start using this feature today and take control of your Strategic Planning investments!

For further details, please check the ServiceNow Documentation or contact your SPM Administrator.

 

Comments
davideluvotto
Tera Expert

Could you link here the documentation?

Vinay3
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee
MatthewS7645253
Tera Explorer

@Vinay3 I receive this error message when trying to access that doc above, can you please assist? 

 

Access Denied

You don't have permission to access "http://www.servicenow.com/docs/bundle/xanadu-it-business-management/page/product/spw-financials/conc..." on this server.

Reference #18.2e51db17.1741885600.2c27cedc

https://errors.edgesuite.net/18.2e51db17.1741885600.2c27cedc

Vinitha Chukkala
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Hi @MatthewS7645253 , I believe some other users are facing this issue as well - 

VinithaC_0-1743543382624.png

 

VinothiniA
Tera Contributor

Hi,

I have selected the fiscal plan start date as 'FY25:M01' ad plan end date as 'FY26:M12" in Portfolio plan form to view the Financial in Portfolio planning workspace. But once i viewed the Financials "Range", it is showing FY24 to FY25 as per screenshot. How Range is taken here?

VinothiniA_0-1748247424668.png

In Fiscal calendar ,we are starting every year from Apr to Mar .None of my projects or demand falling under FY24 dates. Project Planned start date is 08/05/2025 and end date is 08/05/2026

VinothiniA_1-1748247558548.png

 

Could you please clarify.

Vinay3
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Hi @VinothiniA , that shouldn't be the case. Could you please raise a support ticket to analyze further

TammiR
Tera Expert

Good morning What rights are required for this new feature, do you need it_portfolio manager rights? 

Andreas Reuter
Tera Contributor

Hi!

 

Dont know why but i dont have the scheduled job "Data generation for financials in PPW/SPW" available, so i cannot start it to get data. i am on xanadu and have the latested version from the portfolio planning workspace. 

 

Data generation for financials in PPW/SPW

 

Other question to the financials in the portfolio planning: is it possible to work and create financial baselines on portfolio level in the PPW? (as it is on projects workspace for example)

 

THX a lot!

Andreas

 

So, whats missing here?

Vinay3
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Hi @TammiR , to access portfolio financials tab, user needs 'sn_align_ws_spw_financial_user' role

Vinay3
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Hi @Andreas Reuter  do you have Xanadu patch 4 and May 2025 store release version of SPW?

Are you not able to find the mentioned scheduled job or not seeing the 'Scheduled jobs' list itself?

 

Financial baselines on portfolio plans is not yet supported. It is being planned as a future enhancement for 2026. You can take financial baselines in bulk through 'Create financial baselines for active demands and projects' scheduled job.

Andreas Reuter
Tera Contributor

Hi @Vinay3 !

 

Thx for Information about the Baseline options in the PPW. i will keept that in mind for the future. 😉

 

So, i have searched in the scheduled Job for the described "Data generation for financials in PPW/SPW" and i get no searching results to it. 😞 BUT, i may have found the reason and that could be a bug.

So, if i am searching by Name, i get no results, but if i search for text THAN i get the results. and the funny thing is, the result shows exactly the correct description in the column NAME as i was searching for. i think thats a bug. but anyway... i found the job Data generation for financials in PPW/SPW now. 😄

 

Thx a lot for your quick response

Andreas

TammiR
Tera Expert

Thank you @Vinay3 ! I will test it out.

Andreas Reuter
Tera Contributor

Hi

 

Another question about the Financials tab.

I noticed that ootb does not display any data without a filter. This means that you have to explicitly enter a filter in this tab, such as Portfolio and Planning item.

 

This behavior could be observed on the ootb demo instance and also on customer instances. In my opinion, however, the data should be based on the selection and filtering of the portfolio plan. The data is already displayed in the Prioritization tab based on this filtering, so the Financials tab should simply display the financial part based on this data. However, you have to filter again here. Is this the correct approach?

 

 

Vinay3
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

HI @Andreas Reuter The financials tab should display the financial data of planning items that are visible in the prioritization tab based on the portfolio plan, without changing any filter criteria. Not sure why you are not seeing any data. Could you share screenshots or a recording of what you are noticing?

Andreas Reuter
Tera Contributor

So i have all Data visible in my portfolio plan

AndreasReuter_2-1754477760050.png

 

 

And in the financials register is nothing and this with no filter. so i have to set a filter condition to get data there.

AndreasReuter_1-1754477712000.png

 

after i set the filter i get data in here:

AndreasReuter_3-1754477828116.png

 

but in my opinion the data should be shown directly without setting any filter in the financials or not? or is it another bug or do i something wrong?

 

 

TammiR
Tera Expert

Hi @Vinay3  What are your plans regarding the Legacy Portfolio Workbench. One of our Stakeholders is interested in using it but I am hesitant if this is a functionality that will be going away and built into SPW.  He has the role but when I impersonate I am unable to view Portfolio Workbench. 

Vinay3
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

@Andreas Reuter this is an error case where some of the items do not have an investment object as mentioned in the 'Error message' on the screen. Have you tried running the mentioned job and see if the error goes away?

Vinay3
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

@tammi Legacy Portfolio Workbench is planned to be deprecated once PPW/SPW reaches parity. It is recommended to start using SPW.

TammiR
Tera Expert

You Rock @Vinay3  I am also having the same issue regarding the invesetment object message. There are some investments that are blank. I added the investment column to the prioritization view. I will check with the developers regarding the job you are referring to based on this post. If I hit a bump can I reach out for a session?

 

Thank you!! 

TammiR
Tera Expert

Hi, @Vinay3 

I hope all is well. Can we schedule this job to run, data generation for financials in PPW/SPW? I don't think this is automatically happening. I can see new demand based on my portfolio and the Investment mapping is not there. Would we have to run the job again? It states in the document it is a one time run. 

TammiR
Tera Expert

Hi @Vinay3  I believe I can run the job frequency. Any recommendations on the frequency? 

 

 

From Documentation

It is a one-time activity to define and run this scheduled job to view portfolio financials.

Before you begin

Role required: admin

Procedure

  1. Navigate to All > System Definition > Scheduled Jobs.
  2. Filter the name field to locate and open Data generation for financials in SPW/PPW.
  3. Select Active option to activate and schedule the job.
  4. Edit the fields on the Scheduled Script Execution form to customize the job and meet your requirements.

    For more information about the field description and scripts, see Automatically run a script of your choosing.

  5. Select Execute Now to execute the scheduled job.
TammiR
Tera Expert

Hi @Vinay3  I am posting this again. I do not see the question I posted yesterday.  Based on the documentation the data generation for financials PPW/SPW is a one time job we have to run. Can we schedule this job? What are the best practices? We have new demand which is showing up in my portfolio as it should but the link to investment object is missing for that demand and the financials are no longer visible. 

Vinay3
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Hi @TammiR , ideally the job is only needed to be run once after the upgrade. Any new records created should automatically have the investment objects created and do not need the job to be run. If you don't see investment objects created for new demands/projects after the job run, then that needs to be looked into as a separate issue and analyzed why investment objects are not automatically created.

TammiR
Tera Expert

Thank you @Vinay3  we raised a ticket with the ServiceNow Support team and provided them access to our PreProd environment so they can reproduce.

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Last update:
‎03-13-2025 10:03 AM
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