Financials in Project Workspace

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 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 project and demand financials effectively. It offers a streamlined view of actual and planned expenses across fiscal periods, helping project managers and financial users maintain accurate cost control and forecasting throughout the project lifecycle.

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    Key Features

    • Financial Forecasting: Enter high-level forecasts for planning items, including Planned operational expenses (opEx) and capital expenses (capEx).
    • Detailed Cost Breakdown: Create, add, edit, or delete cost plans and expense lines with ease, using a side panel interface that pre-populates relevant details.
    • In-line Editing and Re-forecasting: Update planned expenses directly within the financial grid, adjusting quarterly and yearly totals for accurate re-forecasting.
    • Labor Cost Generation: Automatically generate or refresh planned labor costs based on resource assignments, aligned with organizational financial attributes.
    • Financial Baselines and Comparison: Create and compare baselines to track financial performance against initial forecasts, analyze variances, and understand cost changes over time.
    • Customizable Financial Views: Configure widgets displaying allocated budgets, forecasts (Estimate at Completion), variances, planned costs, and actuals by cost type, along with customizable columns and export options.
    • Time Scope and Currency: View financials over the entire planning item duration or cost plan period, with functional currency applied and time scales adjustable (default monthly or period-based).
    • Color-Coded Expense Types: Easily distinguish actual vs. planned expenses through color-coded headers in the financial grid.

    What to Expect

    By using the Financials view in Project Workspace, ServiceNow customers can expect a comprehensive financial management solution that supports detailed planning, continuous re-forecasting, and historical tracking of project costs. The combination of high-level forecasting and granular cost control empowers project teams to manage budgets proactively, identify cost variances early, and align financials with resource assignments and organizational policies.

    The interface's export capabilities and customizable views facilitate reporting and collaboration with stakeholders, enhancing financial transparency and decision-making throughout project execution.

    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 Using the 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.