---
sourceDocument: Australia Strategic Portfolio Management
sourceDocumentLink: https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/australia/it-business-management

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    - australia

ft:locale :

    - en-US

ft:publication_title :

    - Australia Strategic Portfolio Management

ft:clusterId :

    - itbm

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    - itbm

workflow :

    - Technology


---

# Financial planning for Projects and Demands

# Financial planning for Projects and Demands {#ariaid-title1}

Release version: Australia  
Updated March 12, 2026  
![](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/portal-asset/ico-clock) 3 minutes to read
Summarize  
![AI sparkle icon](https://servicenow.com/docs/portal-asset/ai-sparkle-icon) Summarized using AI  
This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.  

## Summary of Financial planning for Projects and Demands

This feature enables ServiceNow customers to plan, re-forecast, and track financials for projects and demands efficiently.
It provides a streamlined financials view that presents actual and planned expenses across fiscal periods, allowing users to monitor costs comprehensively from past periods through future forecasts.
Show full answer Show less  

## Key Features

* **Financials View:** Displays actual costs for past periods and planned costs for current and future periods, including quarterly and yearly totals, enabling a clear understanding of financial progress.
* **Cost Planning and Management:** Users can create, edit, and delete cost plans and expense lines easily via a dedicated interface and side panels with pre-populated details.
* **High-Level and Detailed Forecasting:** Supports entry of high-level forecasts (Planned OpEx and CapEx) and detailed cost breakdowns, with capabilities to re-forecast expenses using inline editing directly in the grid.
* **Labor Cost Generation:** Automatically generates labor costs based on resource assignments and organizational financial attributes, simplifying labor expense tracking.
* **Financial Baselines and Variance Analysis:** Enables creation and comparison of financial baselines to track deviations between initial forecasts and actual/planned costs, helping identify causes and timing of variances.
* **Customizable Interface:** Includes customizable widgets and columns, color-coded actual and planned expenses, and options to personalize views and export data in Excel or CSV formats.
* **Terminology Updates:** Forecast now replaces EAC (Estimate at Completion), and Remaining Estimates replaces ETC (Estimate to Completion), aligning with updated financial planning terminology.

## Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

* Gain a holistic and up-to-date view of project and demand financials across the entire lifecycle, improving budget control and decision-making.
* Streamline financial planning processes with intuitive tools for cost plan creation, expense line management, and labor cost calculation.
* Enhance forecasting accuracy and responsiveness by re-forecasting planned expenses directly within the interface.
* Improve financial governance through baseline tracking and variance analysis, enabling timely identification and correction of budget deviations.
* Customize the financials view to meet organizational needs and export data for reporting or further analysis.  
Plan, re-forecast, track the financials, and create baselines for projects and demands.

The financials view provides a streamlined perspective, showcasing the actual and planned expenses for the entire fiscal period. You can view the latest estimated cost of completion in this view. It displays the actual costs for
past fiscal periods and the planned costs for current and future fiscal periods. It also displays the totals for the quarter, the year, and the total duration of work.  
The interface gives you the ability to create cost plans, expense lines, and baselines. As a project manager or a financial user, you can:

* Enter high-level financial forecasts for planning items using the simple financials section in the Details tab.
* Work on high-level estimating for Planned opEx and Planned capEx.
* Create a detailed breakdown of the planned costs [using the financials tab](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/fDQvZSfSmHoXKcACCZ2P4g "Manage budgets, cost plans, expense lines, and labor costs for planning items in Strategic Planning Workspace. View, analyze, and compare financial performance at the required cadence.").
* View the rollups of Planned costs, Actuals costs, and Planned benefits for all of your planning items in the Prioritization grid.
* [Add, edit, or delete cost plans](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/W85Iw8A9CrFDBJrdi3h7iQ "Create a cost plan for a required duration to track your planned and actual expenses. Edit cost plans to adjust your planned expenses and delete any de-scoped forecasts.") effortlessly from the Cost screen.
* Re-forecast your planned expenses using the in-line editing feature.
* View a streamlined perspective, showcasing your actual costs for the past and planned expenses for the future, for the entire time scope of the planning item.
* You get a comprehensive solution by viewing the Forecast, Remaining Estimates, and Actuals of each cost plan. You can view them for the total time scope and for the yearly breakdowns. Forecast was previously EAC (Estimate at
  Completion), and Remaining Estimates was previously ETC (Estimate to Completion).

* Re-forecast the planned cost for future fiscal periods by directly updating the quarterly and yearly totals using the in-line editing capability of the grid.
* [Generate labor costs](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/z6TIBz0L9dIR5l86tSw1rA "Generate labor costs for projects and sub-projects based on the attribute-based resource assignments and the financial attributes configured in the planning attributes page.") depending on the resource assignments for the entire scope of the planning item broken down by the financial attributes configured for your organization. For more information on the planning attributes for attribute-based mapping, see [Using the Planning attributes](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/l~67fbYrwwXlkLlddR16YQ "Planning attributes are designed to define and work on attribute-based resource mapping in Resource Management and to generate labor costs for these resources in financials.").
* [Add or edit expense lines](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/8aq~cyKafjdv9fq0L7jSIw "Create or edit expense lines to capture the actual costs. You can associate the expense lines with a cost plan or create standalone expense lines to record unplanned expenses.") against the cost plans easily from the side panel with the associated cost plan details pre-populated.
* Record unplanned expenses using the New expense line side panel.
* Create and compare financial baseline to track the financials of your planning items.
* Compare the latest costs (actual expenses for past fiscal periods and planned costs for current and future fiscal periods) with the initial forecasted planned costs.
* Analyze the cause of variance in costs and when did this occur over time by capturing the financial baselines manually or automatically.

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You can view the following information on the financials screen.

* Time scope: duration of the planning item or a cost plan, whichever has a larger fiscal period range.
* Functional currency: currency defined and used to calculate the financials.
* Customizable widgets showing different financial information such as allocated budget, Forecast (previously EAC - Estimate at Completion), Variance (the difference between budget and Forecast), breakdown of planned costs, and actuals by cost type.  
  Note:  
  Budget and Budget vs EAC Variance widgets are available for Demands and Projects only.
* Time scale: time period breakdowns to view the financials. Default value is set to Month/Period, depending on the fiscal calendar type.
* Display mode: list options to switch between different modes to get a focused view of financials.
* Generate labor costs: one-click solution to generate or refresh the planned labor costs for the planning item depending on resource assignments.  
  Note:  
  This option is enabled for the projects with resource assignments only.
* The pane gives you a tabulated view of the cost plan attributes suc as Name, Cost type, Expense type, Stat fiscal period, End fiscal period, and so on. For more information on how to customize these fields, see [Customize the left pane view for financials](https://www.servicenow.com/docs/4HIl2lWVxU02IAPxJUEw7Q "Customize the left pane for financials to view custom field information.").
* In the right pane, you can view the total Actuals, Forecast, and Remaining Estimates for the selected Time scope duration. Actual expenses against a cost plan for the past fiscal periods, Actuals, Forecast, and Remaining Estimates for the current fiscal year, and planned costs for the current and future fiscal periods.  
  Note:  
  The header rows of actuals and planned are color-coded differently to help you easily identify and differentiate between the expense types.
* New cost plan: opens a simplified side-panel to create cost plan for the entity.
* Personalize option to customize the columns in the left pane of the table.
* Export option to download Cost or Baselines comparison as Microsoft Excel or CSV file.
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