Cost plan, Cost breakdown, Expense line, Resource plan, Time card

[sreedharkaliset]

Hi,

Can anyone tell me the relation between the Cost plan, Cost breakdown, Expense line, Resource plan and Time card.

I could see that when I create a project/demand and associate a resource plan, cost plan got auto created with cost breakdowns. Once the resource plan is approved, I could see the expense line created and when the expense line is processed, actual cost on project/demand got populated based on the expense line.

Wanted to know the relation between the above mentioned entities with a project/demand/resource.

Thanks

[mike_bush]

Cost Management, Resource Management and their interaction with Project Management are huge areas with much complexity.

The WIKI (DOC) does a good job of explaining individual bits but seeing the complete picture is never easy.

I have done some learning in the past by getting into the SCHEMA MAP and "stepping" from one entity to another doodling my own, partial schema as I went.

[sreedharkaliset]

Hi,

I have gone through the individual applications but my concern is about the correlation of these applications and their inter dependencies. Some fields related to cost are dependent directly or indirectly with other applications where i need some help in understanding.

Thanks

[arun_vydianatha]

Cost plans are the basic units under Project/Demand to do financial planning. Through cost plan you can enter the financial requirements for the project like software costs/hardware or training or labor or travel requirements

In the ITFM application you should have defined the fiscal calendar required as per your organization.

The costs entered in cost plan are for a specific period (say FY17: Jan to FY17: Dec), once the costs are entered the cost is broken down per period and stored into the Cost break down table. At what level it is broken down is dependent on the Fiscal calendar setup in your instance. It can be quarter or month or week.

So in the above case you will get 12 records in the Cost Plan break down table for each of the months from Jan to Dec.

The Cost plan breakdown has a column called "Breakdown Type". It takes values like "Requirement", "Task", "Portfolio" or "Program". For the above 12 records created above the breakdown type would be "Requirement".

A project can have multiple cost plans and each cost plan will have many cost break down records.

Now we do a rollup at Cost Plan Breakdown level   (of all the records belonging to a project) and store the aggregate value of all costs per period in Cost Plan breakdown table with Breakdown type as "Task". This is the overall cost of project distributed across the fiscal periods. A portfolio/program can have n number of projects and all the Cost Plan Breakdowns for the projects belonging to the portfolio/program are rolled up and again stored in Cost breakdown table with Breakdown type as "Portfolio"

If you see above diagram you will get the picture. Portfolio has 3 projects.

For each project by quarter I know the cost and they are rolled up into Portfolio.

The Cost breakdown record for a Project are in turn rolled up from the Cost requirements entered for the project.

So to recap the data model is something like this

Resource Plans

Resource plans also have cost associated with them. But you don't have to explicitly create a Cost plan record for a resource plan. When resource plans are created we know which resources/groups are going to work on and we know the labor rate for those resources, we know the time period in which they are going to work. So we auto-create cost plans for you from the resource plans.

It would be something like this

Time Cards

Time cards capture the actual time worked and the actual cost incurred for the work. The actuals incurred are brought back to the Cost plan breakdown records at Task level and stored there and also further rolled up to Portfolio/Program

Not only time cards any expense line you create (in fm_expense_line table) you can map the expense to a Project and also a specific Cost Plan in the project. Once the expense line is processed the actual cost is brought back to Cost Plan breakdown record (against that requirement) and stored there and also rolled up to Project and Portfolio level.

As you can see below in expense line you have cost plan field

And once expense line is processed the actuals are stored against the same Cost plan (see the Actual in related list)

And also rolled up to Project level (See actual column in related list)

Hope this clears some of your confusion. Ping back if you have further questions.

[sreedharkaliset]

Thanks Arun for the detailed explanation. I still am confused a bit regarding the cost plan breakdown and cost calculation in project/demand.

Is Cost plan breakdown the basic entity to start the cost roll up??

Even after time card approval, and after an expense line is processed, does cost gets updated in cost plan breakdown and then to project??

Also we have some confusion regarding the budget cost and cost allocations in cost plan and cost plan breakdown

Can you please share any document or link that explains these calculations and dependencies a bit further.

Thanks