Project labor cost type - Opex and Capex

[neilgiliker]

In my projects some tasks will financially be capitalised other will need ot be recognised as operational costs. How can I identify project tasks as being wither Capx or Opex costs? Out of the box SN seems to assume all project costs are 'Labor Capex' . Is this oething I can set at a task level or do I have to set it at the Labotr rate card level? If the latter I see no option to set Labor rate cards as either Opex or Capex. Again it seems to assume all is Capex. Please advise.

Thanks,

Neil.

[Uncle Rob]

I'm having some trouble understanding this too.
It seems Demand is where you create resource plans, but that's happening prior to the Project Schedule.  Since that's the case your resource plans don't link to project tasks specifically, but rather the project as a whole.  Since resource plans are on project, but not project tasks (unless I'm wrong on that), then time cards against project tasks aren't fulfilling actual from a resource plan. 

So how does one consistently bring together the cost plans downstream of resource plans on a project, with the actuals coming in from time cards against project tasks?

[seberly]

Can anyone from the ServiceNow ITBM product team comment on this? This issue is a huge point of contention in our organization, as we are very much in line with how @mustc views the world of CapEx/Opex - it needs to be at a project task level.

We have a pretty heavy customization today to handle this today, and we'd love to get rid of it.  Here is the rub: the resource management tool in project workspace is an extremely needed improvement for being able to manage resource plans, however, when you add a resource to the grid, you are actually creating a resource plan at the project level even if you've clicked "manage" on the resource plan related list on a project task.  Because of this, we would have to train users to first manually create a resource plan on the project task (without the project workspace tool) and then go into the project workspace resource tool to massage the weekly data.  This is a very convoluted way to manage resource plans, and will definitely be a challenge to train users in this way.  Because of this, we have held back on adopting project workspace until we can figure out how to adopt resource plans at a project level.

Is there any thought of integrating the way @mustc explains managing project financials into the platform?

Any information would be very welcome and helpful!

Thanks,
Scott

[Damon Bell]

Hi Neil,

So the way I handled this as a previous customer of ServiceNow was to create a custom choice attribute on the Project Task Table which would have either Capex or Opex as a selection.  I then built my Project Plan templates to have Opex selected for Initiation and Planning Phase and Capex for Execution.

Once time was recorded on the tasks I could then report the hours which could be capitalized vs operational.  

If you need to do this at Resource Plan level there isn't really an easy way.  The only option is to create Resource Plans for operational phases and one for the capital phases of the project. 

Happy to jump on a call to discuss if you wish?

[seberly]

Damon,

Thanks for your attention to this.

So, we have a very similar method for accounting for Captial vs. Expense the way you described, but the breaking point for us is the Expense Lines generated from time cards.  We use Expense Lines to report on capital versus operating expenses in a given project.

Out of the box all time is capex as stated perviously.  And so, as you said, that leads us down the path of creating separate resource plans - one for capex and one for opex.  This isn't a problem for us - you set the cost type of the auto-generated cost plan and you're good to go.

I think the quandary here is actually a little different than how to track whether a task is capex or opex - as that is fairly straightforward as we've just covered.  What I believe the members of this thread are trying to convey is the fundamental difference in how the platform is leading us to use resource plans and how our companies need to utilize resource plans to track capex versus opex time.

The resource grid in project workspace is more or less pigeonholing you into creating resource plans at the project level via either the new button in the top left, or via the resource finder.  Both options create resource plans at the project level, and there doesn't seem to be a great way of changing this as a resource manager.

Furthermore, when resource plans transfer from a demand to a project, there is no user friendly way to funnel them to a project task.  They are just transferred to the project.

Is there anything to accommodate these requirements on the roadmap?  I'd love to have insight into this for strategic planning within our IT department.

I am open to having a call with whoever is interested.

Thanks,
Scott

[Uncle Rob]

Hey Scott,

I'm somewhat with you.  My customers are migrating from Project and are used to managing resources at the project task level.  However, during the project they've actually came about and find managing at Project level a lot more palatable.  

Our custom solution wasn't heavy, and included...
- capex / opex choice on Resource Plan & Project Task.
- Modified rules so that cost plans generated by resource plans would use the appropriate expense type (no more 100% capex labor!!!)
- Modified rules so that submission of a time_card checked the project_task expense type, then looked for a similarly typed Resource Plan for populating actuals.

Both the PM's and RMs have been much more encouraged to deal with less Resource Plans over-all for a project.  They just ahve to remember that they'll need two Resource Plans if they want to consume both capex and opex labor from a given group.