Financials in Project Workspace

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Financials in Project Workspace

    The Financials feature in Project Workspace enables ServiceNow customers to plan, re-forecast, track, and baseline financials for projects and demands throughout their fiscal periods. It provides a streamlined interface that displays actual and planned expenses, allowing project managers and financial users to manage costs comprehensively across the entire project duration.

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    Key Features

    • Financial Forecasting and Planning: Enter high-level forecasts for planned operational and capital expenditures directly in the Details tab, and create detailed cost breakdowns within the financials section.
    • Cost Plan Management: Add, edit, or delete cost plans using a side panel, with the ability to record unplanned expenses via new expense lines.
    • In-line Re-forecasting: Update planned costs for future fiscal periods by editing quarterly and yearly totals directly within the grid interface.
    • Labor Cost Generation: Automatically generate planned labor costs based on resource assignments, aligned with organizational financial attributes.
    • Financial Baselines and Comparisons: Create and compare financial baselines to track cost variances over time, helping analyze when and why deviations from forecasts occur.
    • Customizable Views and Widgets: Visualize allocated budgets, forecasts (EAC), variances, and cost breakdowns by type, with color-coded headers for easy differentiation of actual versus planned expenses.
    • Export and Personalize: Customize left pane columns, and export cost or baseline comparisons as Excel or CSV files for external analysis.

    Key Outcomes

    • Gain a clear, consolidated view of actual and planned financials across all fiscal periods, improving budget oversight and financial control.
    • Enhance financial accuracy with the ability to perform detailed planning and quick re-forecasting, supporting agile project financial management.
    • Track cost variances effectively by comparing financial baselines, enabling better decision-making based on historical and forecasted data.
    • Leverage automated labor cost computations to align resource assignments with financial planning, reducing manual effort.
    • Facilitate reporting and stakeholder communication by exporting detailed financial data in common formats.

    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 by displaying the Actual costs for the past fiscal periods, planned costs for the current and future fiscal periods, the totals for quarter, year, and 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.
    • Add, edit, or delete cost plans from the side panel.
    • 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.
    • Get a better comprehensive solution by viewing the Forecast (previously EAC - Estimate at Completion), Remaining Estimates (previously ETC - Estimate to Completion), and Actuals of each cost plan for the total time scope and the yearly breakdowns.
    • 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 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 Planning attributes.
    • Add or edit expense lines against the cost plans 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 projects while you execute them.
    • 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 by creating financial baseline and using the compare baselines capability.
    • Analyze the cause of variance in costs and when did this occur over time by capturing the financial baselines manually or automatically.
    Figure 1. Financials screen
    Financials screen for Project Workspace.
    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.
    • 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 displaying the Name, Cost type, Expense type, Stat fiscal period, End fiscal period, Total planned cost, Employee type, and Role. You can customize these fields. For more information, see Customize the left pane view for financials.
    • 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 a new 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.