Cost plan not available when creating an expense from Demand

[gjz]

Can someone help me understand how an expense line can be created against a Demand?

We would like to start tracking expenses on a Demand, but it's not working for us.  Per the documentation, I should be able to select a cost plan against which I want to create the expense line - but the cost plans for the demand do not appear in the list.

My example:

DMND0006660 has two cost plans, one for Capex ($2000) and one for Opex ($50000).  I want to expense $1000 of the Capex cost plan.  Per the documentation, I should select the cost plan associated with the demand - but it doesn't appear in the list.

Capex cost plan:

Cost plan search on cost plan name:

Cost plan search on Demand number:

How can I create expense lines against a specific cost plan that belongs to a Demand?

[Rajesh_Singh]

@gjz 

To create an expense line against a specific cost plan for a demand in ServiceNow PPM, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Demand form where you want to add an expense line.

2. Scroll down to the "Cost Plans" related list and open the cost plan you want to create an expense line for (either Capex or Opex in your example).

3. Once you have the cost plan open, scroll down to the "Expense Lines" related list.

4. Click the "New" button to create a new expense line.

5. Fill in the necessary fields, such as "Short Description," "Expense Type," "Amount," "Date," and any other required fields.

6. Click "Submit" to save the new expense line.

The new expense line will now be associated with the specific cost plan for the demand. If you are still unable to see the cost plans for the demand in the list, it could be a configuration issue or a problem with user permissions. In this case, you may need to consult your ServiceNow administrator or support team to investigate and resolve the issue.

[gjz]

Rajesh, thanks for the instructions from the cost plan - it does help a lot.  However, the actuals still aren't applied to the cost plan and instead are applied to the Demand.  I opened a ticket with SN to find out why their functionality doesn't follow the documentation.

[danieltietze]

Apologies, but I would seriously question the use case of tracking Expense Lines against Demands.

As you already found, the system seems to be safeguarding against that. 🙂

It sounds like you are planning to track expenses incurred by the Demand itself? e.g. cost that are directly related to handling the Demand, rather than cost planned and incurred later, when the Demand is being executed? This is typically something I advise customers against. For me, the Demand is not an element of active work. Work done on Demands should be tracked in projects, or as operations, overhead cost, etc.

Also - just from the data model and the ootb behaviour: When you convert the Demand into a Project, the Cost Plans are moved (!) to that new project. What would you now expect the Expense Lines to do, that you've associated with the Demand AND the Cost Plan?

Tracking actual cost against Demands seems to go against much of what a Demand is intended for.

[gjz]

Demand Management is not limited to demands that become projects.  There are other reasons for Demands and in my company, they are used for all capital requests - and not all capital requests result in a project.  Per the documentation, you can create an expense line against a cost plan on a demand and that is what we want to do so we can quit creating projects for demands that are not real projects.

Per the documentation, you can have a cost associated with a demand (which implies you need a cost plan) - "A demand expense line is cost associated with a specific source, such as a user, fixed asset, or a CI.  Expense lines are part of demand cost plans".

I posted this question because per the documentation, you can create an expense line for a cost plan on a Demand but the functionality does not do what the documentation states.