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12-18-2024 11:24 PM - edited 06-18-2025 11:54 PM
The following is the list of Frequently Asked Questions related to the new financials experience in SPM for projects, demands and epics as part of the Project workspace and Strategic planning workspace.
This is a living document that will be constantly updated with latest FAQs based on the questions ServiceNow product team receives from the community.
1Q) I am not able to see the record financials page for the planning items in SPW. What could be the reason?
Ans: To be able to access the financials page for planning items in SPW, the required role is ‘sn_align_ws.spw_financial_user’.
Two other configurations which needs to be double checked for the financials page to be visible are –
1. Internal integrations need to be setup between the planning item table and the respective core tables for the record types. More info here
2. An active record for the planning item or core ppm table for the record type should be available in the investment entities table . Following page explains how to configure it for an epic planning item type - https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/xanadu-it-business-management/page/product/spw-financials/task/en...
2Q) I am an existing customer who want to allocate budget by cost type instead of by expense type that we have been using in the past. What are the things that need to be considered before making the switch?
Ans: Changing the budget attribute to ‘cost_type’ in your existing instance could have following impact:
1. If your existing instance is already using cost_type to identify costs of different categories like labor, software, hardware etc, update the cost type values to ‘IT Funded’ and ‘business funded’ will make the past data of cost plans in-consistent with future data.
2. If you had budget records by Capex, Opex in the past, changing the budget attribute to ‘cost_type’, will make the past budget records inconsistent with the future budget records which are allocated by ‘cost_type’. The project workspace UI will also show comparison of budget vs cost by ‘cost_type’ and so the past projects with budget given by expense type won’t have the budget comparison available. Your existing data needs to be looked at to see if there is possibility to handle the past data to be compatible with the new budget attribute. Alternatively, you can choose to go with new budget attribute from the beginning of a planning cycle with all new projects with budget allocated by cost type.
3Q) How can I compare actual costs with planned costs in the new financials experience?
Ans: In the new financials view, latest actual costs can be compared with estimated planned costs using the compare baselines capability. Create a financial baseline before the start of a project to compare the latest forecast data (actuals till last fiscal period and planned cost for current and future fiscal periods) with the initial forecast data with planned cost for all fiscal periods).
Therefore it’s important to create a financial baseline before the project has started execution and also on a periodic basis to keep track of the changes in the financials data.
Financial baselines can be created manually or automatically through a scheduled job ‘Create financial baseline for active projects and demands’.
Detailed explanation can be found here - https://www.servicenow.com/community/spm-articles/how-to-compare-latest-actuals-with-planned-cost-in...
4Q) How can one add more fields (ex: Vendor) from cost plans to the list view in the new financials page in Project Workspace?
Ans: Please refer the following documentation page: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/bundle/xanadu-it-business-management/page/product/pw-financials/task...
5Q) How can one add more attributes (ex: Vendor) to the New cost plan form in the side panel of the new Financials page in Project Workspace?
Ans: Please refer the following documentation page:
6Q) Why is the 'Create Demand Budget' link not visible for demands in classic Demand UI page in my new instance?
Ans: The demand budget link would be hidden if the instance has 'sn_invst_pln.enable_budget_allocation_v2' property set to true. If the property is set to true, the instance is upgraded to use the new budget allocation capability released as part of the new Financials experience for demands and projects.
With the property set to true, budget can be added to demands using the 'Investment Budget' related list on the demand details page. This related list can be configured by admin using steps in this documentation page -
Alternatively users can and should be using the 'New financials' experience for demands and other planning items in the 'Portfolio Planning Workspace' to have a better experience of allocating budget to demands.
Please find more information in the following doc pages:
If you are not ready to move to the new budget allocation capability yet, the property can be set to false, which will re-enable the demand budget link.
7Q) Why is there a new overview tab which gives comparison of budget vs plan vs actuals by fiscal qtr?
Ans: The new financials page has a 'Budget vs cost' toggle which will be enabled when the system property ‘sn_invst_pln.enable_budget_allocation_v2’ is set to true and the budget entered from classic view is migrated to the new data model using 'Migrate budget' capability.
This view supports comparison of Budget with Actuals for past fiscal periods and planned cost for current and future fiscal periods at monthly, quarterly and annual level.
Please review the following two links for more information:
Learn about the new budget allocation model
Learn more about how to migrate budget to support new model
8Q) Why isn't there a benefits plan tab on the financials page in 'New Project Workspace'?
Ans: Ability to manage monetary benefit plans as part of the financials page is on the product roadmap expected to be released soon.
Currently, monetary benefit plans can be created and updated from the related lists in the 'Details' page of project workspace.
9Q) Can Investment Funding be used to allocate budget to projects moved to new financials?
Ans: Investment Funding is not compatible with new budget allocation data model. Budget allocated from Investment funding to projects would need to be migrated to new budget data model explicitly to be visible on the new 'budget vs cost' view.
10Q) Can both Investment Funding and New Scenario Planning in SPW be used together in an instance to allocate funds to demands and projects?
Ans: Investment Funding is not compatible with new budget allocation data model. SPW Scenario financials is compatible only with the new budget allocation data model. Budget allocated from Investment funding to projects would need to be migrated to new budget data model explicitly to be visible on the new 'budget vs cost' view and SPW Scenario financials.
Its not recommended to use both for funding demands/projects at the same time.
Existing customers using Investment Funding should migrate budget allocated through Investment Funding to new budget data model and then switch to using SPW Scenario planning to allocate/revise budgets on work items. Its needs to be noted that capabilities like funds allocation across multiple levels in a hierarchy, funds allocation to high level entities like Programs is not yet supported through SPW Scenario planning.
11Q) Why isn't there a labor cost plan for every resource assignment created?
Ans: The new financial planning on work items follows an attribute-based methodology to generate labor cost plans instead of creating one cost plan per resource assignment. It enables organizations to create financials as per the granularity and categorization of their choice that is needed for reporting.
More information can be found here
12Q) Why are labor cost plans not generated/updated immediately after creating/updating resource assignments?
Ans: The new attribute based labor cost plans model groups cost of resources based on the configured attributes like role, employee type etc, the system needs to consider updates from multiple resource assignments together to generate/refresh the cost plans. The new Resource assignment experience enables users to quickly make 10s or 100s of updates to resource assignments. If a user makes high number of updates to resource assignments, it would take a lot of system processing to refresh labor costs for every individual update one after the other.
To avoid overwhelming the system with so much processing, it is ideal to update the labor cost plans after all the required updates are done on the resource assignments either manually or automatically.
The 'Generate labor costs' button on the financials page enables user to trigger generation or updating the labor cost plans.
'Generate labor costs for active demands and projects' scheduled job is available out of the box which can be activated and configured to run periodically one or multiple times a do to avoid manual effort and keep the labor cost plans upto date.
More information can be found here
Please subscribe to this page for updates regarding new FAQs on financials in SPM
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Hi @Vinay3
'Project Budget' link not visible for projects in classic Project UI page in my new instance after enabling this 'sn_invst_pln.enable_budget_allocation_v2' property .As you mentioned , I am able to view 'Investment Budget' related list on the demand details page. Similarly in project form , do we have related list for budget?
How budget will be calculated in Project after new financials enabled?
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@VinothiniA For projects, we have a budget allocation view in the new project workspace. Please refer this link - https://www.servicenow.com/community/spm-articles/new-flexible-budget-allocation-capability-in-spm-d...
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@Vinay3 Yes, I am able to view the Budget Allocation in new Project Workspace. But I am not able to view in native UI form(pm_project) form .So, in that case ,will we be able to create budget for Project only from Project workspace?
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@VinothiniA Yes we recommend using the project workspace for allocating budget to Projects. But you can also add similar Investment Budget related list to the classic project UI if required as a custom configuration.
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Thanks for the update @Vinay3
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Hi @Vinay3 ,
By any chance, do you know if it's possible to have a default "group by" and "time scope" for all users in Financials tab in the new project workspace? It's doesn't seems The group by and time scope persist when leaving the tab after user selection, at least not yet, but a default selection for all users would do the trick for our needs. It's how we did it in the classic workspace.
Thanks !
