Financial planning for planning items

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Financial planning for planning items

    Financial planning for planning items in ServiceNow Yokohama release enables you to plan, re-forecast, track financials, and create baselines for detailed planning items such as demands, projects, epics, features, and capabilities. It provides a comprehensive financial view across fiscal periods, showing actual costs for past periods and planned costs for current and future periods, rolled up by quarter, year, or full item scope.

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    Note that financial planning is currently not supported for high-level entities like Initiatives, Strategic programs, or Product ideas, and labor cost generation is not available at the individual planning item level.

    Key Features

    • Financial Record Interface: Create and manage cost plans, expense lines, and financial baselines through an intuitive record page.
    • High-Level Forecasting: Enter and update planned operating expenses (OpEx) and capital expenses (CapEx) easily in the Details tab and financials tab.
    • Financial Rollups: View aggregated planned costs, actual costs, and planned benefits for all planning items within the Prioritization grid.
    • In-line Editing: Quickly re-forecast planned expenses by editing quarterly and yearly totals directly in the grids.
    • Labor Cost Generation: Automatically generate or refresh labor costs based on resource assignments for projects, with breakdowns by configured financial attributes.
    • Expense Line Management: Add, edit, or record unplanned expense lines via side panels with pre-populated cost plan details.
    • Financial Baselines: Create and compare baselines to track variances between initial forecasts and latest actuals/planned costs, enabling variance analysis over time.
    • Customizable Views and Widgets: Switch display modes and personalize columns in cost plan views. Use financial widgets to monitor allocated budgets, forecasts, variances, and cost breakdowns by type.
    • Export Capability: Export cost plans and baseline comparisons as Excel or CSV files for further analysis.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Gain transparent and streamlined insight into financial performance across multiple planning items and fiscal periods.
    • Improve financial forecasting accuracy by leveraging in-line editing and detailed cost breakdowns.
    • Track financial health effectively with baseline comparisons and variance analysis to manage budget adherence.
    • Integrate labor cost generation based on resource assignments to align financials with workforce planning.
    • Customize financial views and widgets to focus on relevant cost types and time scales, enhancing decision-making.
    • Export financial data easily for reporting or integration with other financial tools.

    Additional Notes

    The financials view uses color-coded headers to differentiate actual and planned expense types for clarity. Budget and budget variance widgets are only available for Demands and Projects. The time scale defaults to month or period based on your fiscal calendar, helping to align financial tracking with organizational accounting standards.

    Plan, re-forecast, track the financials, and create baselines for all of your planning items.

    You can work on financial planning supported on low level planning items like demands, projects, epics, features, capabilities, and so on.

    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 viewing the Actual costs for the past fiscal periods, planned costs for the current and future fiscal periods, and the total by quarter, year, or for the full scope of the item.
    Note:
    • Currently, Financials is not yet supported for high level entities like Initiatives, Strategic programs, Product ideas, and so on.
    • Labor costs generation is not supported at planning item level.
    Interface of the financials record page gives you the ability to create cost plans, expense lines, and baselines. As 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.
    • 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 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.
    • Get a better comprehensive solution by viewing the Forecast (previously EAC - Estimate at Completion) and Remaining Estimates (previously ETC - Estimate to Completion). This includes 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 Using the Planning attributes.
    • Add or edit expense lines 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. Do this by creating a 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.
    • Switch between different display modes to get a focused view of the financial records.
    Financials screen.
    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 left pane gives you a tabulated view of the cost plan attributes. These include 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.