Cost Management and Financial Management plugins - what's the difference?

michaelcassidy · ‎01-22-2019

I can see both of these plugins in the product documentation, but I can't seem to find any info about which plugin/product is most appropriate for various use cases. Or do they work together?

I'm curious about:

Subscription costs - seems like Cost Management is free with standard ITSM... but Financial Management requires ITBM licensing?
History & purpose - what came first? Is one designed to replace the other? Eg Cost Management replaced by Financial Management within ITBM? What are the major differences or limitations of each product?
Can a customer begin using Cost Management, then migrate to Financial Management if required? Looks like they both make reference to Expense Lines.

We're in early days of considering using ServiceNow for IT cost reporting & chargebacks/showbacks and looking for advice on plugins related to achieve that.

Thanks!

Sunil B N · ‎01-22-2019

Hi Michael,

Licensing: Cost Management and Financial Management work together. Cost management is free with Platform. The Financial Management Core (com.snc.financial_management) plugin requires a separate subscription from the rest of the Now Platform.

History & Purpose: Cost management helps to track associated to CI(configuration items) and create related expense lines and allocations to Business Units and cost centres. Financial Management includes Financial modelling(formerly known as Cost transparency) which provides fiscal periods, allocation engine, workbench and reports and dashboards. It also includes Financial Charging(formerly known as Service Charging/ Showback) which helps in reporting the financial aspects of a business service to the various stakeholders in the organization that consume this service.

Plugin Detail: Financial Management Core (com.snc.financial_management) plugin activates the following applications:

Financial Modeling: Activates Financial Modeling application, formerly known as Cost Transparency.
Financial Charging (com.snc.service_charging): Activates the showback and service charging features of Financial Charging application, formerly known as Financial Reporting.
Cost management

Read more here.

For chargeback/showback Financial Charging Plugin is something you may be interested in.

I hope I was able to give some glimpse on what you are looking for.

Best Regards,
Sunil B N

View solution in original post

Kohei4 · ‎05-14-2020

Hi, Sunil

Thanks for you reply!

When customer would like to process planning an annual estimate and budget for operation cost, they need related CI configured and using cost management as Financial management is just for calculating result, correct?

Understood that PPM can track the cost as well!!

BR
Kohei

Sunil B N · ‎05-14-2020

Yes, you are right.

tracyjeannine · ‎08-15-2024

Is this information still current? Seeking plugins/apps to setup Chargebacks/Showbacks. Is there NowLearning training on this as well?

pls advise & thx

Sorenrv · ‎05-14-2020

Kohei, from my understanding, an implemented CMDB is not a requirement for getting value out of Cost Management. Cost Management can accumulate, report on, and allocate costs based on a variety of Servicenow data entities.

Yes, one option is to accumulate costs based on CI costs and "who uses which CI" logic. Other options i Cost Management include cost tracking based on 1) Tasks (cost calculated based on assignee time and rate) i.e. any record inherited from Task object, e.g. Service Requests, Changes, and Incidents, and 2. Assets covered by Contracts where Contract Rate Cards are used as a cost base. There may be other options available too. Anyway, a mature CMDB is not a prerequisite for using the Cost Management application in Servicenow :).

Kohei4 · ‎05-14-2020

Hi, Sorenrv

Thank you for your comment. Sound great!

Do you know if there is any material to learn about Cost Management other than Docs article? As I have searched on Now Learning but I found not find...