Project Budget Availability Control Profile: Project Budget Relevant Costs

Customers may want to closely monitor budget overruns and available budget for a few specific cost groups like Travel Costs and Training Costs instead of all costs. This will help them have a better hold over the budget allocated for smaller subset of cost groups and closely monitor the actual costs posted for the same set of cost groups.

With SAP S/4 HANA Cloud 1911, budget-relevant costs can be defined for Projects with the help of Budget Availability Control Profile. This helps  customers in analyzing budget consumption and budget overruns

In order to define costs as budget relevant, a semantic tag needs to be created and the G/L accounts to be categorized as budget relevant must be assigned to this semantic tag. This semantic tag should be assigned to the Budget Availability Control Profile, which will be later associated with the Project. The steps to configure this are explained below.

How to Create a new Semantic Tag

1. Log on to the Fiori launchpad with the role BPC_EXPERT
2. Launch the Manage Your Solution app and choose Configure Your Solution
3. Choose Finance as the Application Area and General Ledger as the Sub Application Area
4. In the list items retrieved, choose the item with Item Name Chart of Accounts
5. To create a new semantic tag, select Define Semantic Tag for Financial Statement Version and choose Configure
6. Choose New Entries, provide all the details and choose Save

How to Associate a Semantic Tag with Items

Prerequisite:

Find out the FSV item number:

1. Log on to the Fiori launchpad with the role GL_ACCOUNTANT
2. Launch the Manage Financial Statement Versions app
3. Select the required Financial Statement Version and choose Financial Statement Items.

Note: In SAP S/4HANA Cloud, the leading Financial Statement Version supported is YPS2. This is associated with A000, the Controlling Area available in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

1. Choose Settings and choose Change
2. Select the checkbox Item Keys Visible and choose Continue to view the FSV item number

Steps to associate a Semantic Tag with FSV Items:

1. Log on to the Fiori launchpad with the role GL_ACCOUNTANT
2. Launch the Assign Semantic Tags to FSV app to assign the newly created semantic tag to an FSV Item number that must be defined as budget relevant
3. Choose New Entries, choose Assign Semantic Tag to FS Item, and choose Continue
4. Enter the details and choose Save

How to Associate a Semantic Tag with Budget Availability Control Profile

1. Log on to the Fiori launchpad with the role BPC_EXPERT
2. Launch the Manage Your Solution app and choose Configure Your Solution
3. Choose Finance as the Application Area and Overhead Cost Management as the Sub Application Area
4. In the list items retrieved, choose the item with Item Name Budget Management
5. To associate a semantic tag with Budget Availability Control Profile, select Maintain Budget Availability Control Profile for Projects and choose Configure
6. Choose New Entries, and enter the details in Profiles

     7. Select Semantic Tags, and enter the semantic tag created and other details

      8.Select Tolerance Limits, enter the details and choose Save

How to Associate a Budget Availability Control Profile with Project

Associate a budget availability control profile with your projects in the Project Control app and make it Active.

How to View the Budget-Relevant Costs in Project Budget Report application

The following AVC columns were introduced to the Project Budget Report – Overview app with SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1911. These columns help users analyze budget-relevant costs defined for a project:

• Actual Costs (AVC) in Global Currency
• Commitments (AVC) in Global Currency
• Planning Category Costs (AVC) in Global Currency
• Budget (AVC) in Global Currency
• AVC Assigned Value (AVC Actual + AVC Commitments)
• Available Budget (AVC Budget – AVC Assigned Value)
• Actual Costs (AVC) in Project Currency
• Budget (AVC) in Project Currency
• Commitments (AVC) in Project Currency
• Planning Category Costs (AVC) in Project Currency

In the above example, in case of projects that are not mapped to an AVC or mapped to an AVC profile that is still mapped to the ACT_COST semantic tag, then all the costs are displayed in the AVC cost columns.

You can then select one or more projects or WBS elements and choose View Details to navigate to view budget relevant costs at the line item level in the Project Budget Report – Line Items application.

If the Only Budget Relevant Values filter is set to Yes in the Project Budget Report – Line Items screen, then only the budget-relevant costs will be displayed. If the Only Budget Relevant Values filter is set to No, then all costs posted against the project WBS elements will be displayed but non budget-relevant costs will have No as the value in the Budget Relevant Values column

In case of projects that do not have an active budget availability control profile, the Only Budget Relevant Values filter has no influence on the table. All costs related to such projects are displayed in the table. Due to this, even when you set the Only Budget Relevant Values filter to Yes, you will still see line items of these projects in the table. Such line items will have No as the value in the Budget Relevant Values column.

Example of behavior of the Project Budget Report – Overview application

The following configuration is maintained in the system:

G/L Account of Budget Relevant Semantic Tag (Travel Cost & Training Cost) = 10000

G/L Account of Non-Budget Relevant Semantic Tag (Purchased Services) =20000

A project is defined, and the below cost postings are made to it: 

Project Budget Report Overview application will show the below cost details for the three projects:

As explained above with this new feature customers can easily monitor accrued costs which are relevant from the allocated Project Budget and Budget Consumption perspective.

This blog post is a first in a series of three. The next topics in the series are:

Project Budget Availability Control Profile – Time Range

Project Budget Availability Control Profile – Budget Currency Type