Tracking of total project costs in case of partial capitalization

[rb2020]

Hello - anyone out there have use cases where they are using an investment project to capitalize an asset under construction (we are developing software), but not all the costs are capitalizable?  For example, Marketing might spend time coming up with the campaigns for this new product, but we can't call that part of the capitalized software asset.

I would love to create an elegant solution whose end result would be a way to show the whole project landscape with as few reports as possible.  Here are my ideas so far:

1) Create multiple WBS elements within one project, with different settlement rules for each element.  Element 1 would be the capital costs, and element 2, 3, and so one would be different categories of cost, and simply settle back to their appropriate cost center.  

The issue with this approach I have so far, is I don't see good reporting of the movement history through a project.  Once a project is settled (each month for us), reporting on those costs that came into and were settled out of the project - I honestly can't find any.  I designed this approach under the assumption you could, which may have been bad advice.

2) Create a sister statistical project for each investment project.  All non-capital costs would go to the statistical project.  Then you'd pull a report of the AUC (would have all the costs settled out of the investment project), and the sister statistical project - by their combination you have a total picture.

Not exactly ideal, but getting there.

3) Untested - I've heard/seen bits and pieces about assigning a statistical project to an asset, and all asset postings will also post to that statistical project.  If then we also posted marketing etc. costs freely to the same statistical project, the project would have a complete picture in one place.  This seems ideal - if anyone has experience in this, please enlighten me, as I may have misinterpreted what i've seen on the subject.

Anyone's thoughts on any of the 3, or an alternative strategy you're successfully using would be most welcome.

[rb2020 · Accepted solution]

In case anyone looks at this, you can indeed report on costs posted to an investment project even after those costs are settled.

Go to > Project Actuals > Run the report > Add "Dr/Cr Indicator" as a row

you'll see all the debits with one indicator (D), and credits with a special indicator (O - credit for settlement).

[MarNow · Accepted solution]

Two of my customers are filtering out by 'Bus. Transaction. Yype' which is available in 'Project Actuals' and many more primary finance reports. I have propose to filter out 'KOAE' Actual Settlement which allows to get correct results even with reversal / corrections to settlements.

[rb2020]

Option 3 is not realistic or what I thought it was - though you can add a statistical order/WBS to the eventual asset, it is only for purposes of posting to that object when depreciation is posted, it appears.