Project Planning & Tracking

[former_member95896]

We're trying to figure out the project tracking functionality in S4HC. The best practice scripts, flows, and web tutorials (1NT, 1A8, 35E, 35F) have had some value to us, but we're still a bit confused on some of the functionality/limitations and the levels that we should or have to record plan/budget data at.

We track budgets in excel right now which while isn't uncommon, but is unwieldy at best with a hundred new stores being constructed annually, existing store refreshes and dozens of OpEx and CapEx initiatives we're trying to keep track of an analyze.

Here are some questions I have and I hope that you guys can help out or at least give me a more plain explanation on how it works most of which surround budgets/plans, but also the type of project:

Project Types & Functionality:

• What are the differences and reasons you would use the Internal Projects (in 1A8) vs Statistical Projects (in 1NT)? I'm having a hard time figuring out the advantages of one vs the other (besides Manage/Create Internal Projects app has a bit of more intuitive interface)
  • Can you assign PO's, Invoices, Journal Entries, etc against both?
  • What is the difference between how expected costs/expenses are captured and entered for each?

Budget/Plan

• I know that you can configure planning categories but what are the default values intended use/limitations? Of those defaults, I assume Pln (Plan) is the standard annual stake in the ground that isn't supposed to change. Is BUDGET01 supposed to be the working budget that changes over time? How do we track the different budget versions? Create BUDGET0X or does the system keep track of versioning and overwrites? I'm just trying to think about how we'd update the working budget/forecast on an ongoing basis.
• Is there any way to enter plan or budget data for a project beyond the upload template?
• Most of our annual projects don't have an expected spend date for them and for some we don't know all of the cost centers/gl accounts involved (ex. we have $3million budgeted for project x in 2019 which may span 1 cost center gl account or many over the course of the year it isn't all defined day 1). It appears that the upload template requires not only a cost center and fiscal year, but also fiscal period, and gl account. is there anyway to just enter for the fiscal year or change the cost centers gl accounts on the fly?
• We also have projects like new store creations that span multiple years, would we have to break out and enter plans/budgets based on fiscal year/period/ gl account in those cases?
• It seems that the plan and budget/forecast loading has a pretty rigid detailed structure, is there any way to make it less granular and more flexible?

Thanks in advance for the help!

Ryan

[RolandDP · Accepted solution]

Statistical projects have a cost center assigned, and are typically used to track activities / events within a cost center. PO's / Invoices / JE's are coded against the statistical Project and post automatically to the cost center assigned to the statistical project. Without settlement!

An internal projects are real cost accounting objects, and you need to maintain a settlement rule for them. Here you have the option to settle to one or multiple cost centers. Example: you run an ad in the local newspaper: the expense first is posted to the internal project and then settled to all the stores in the area.

[RolandDP]

The App 'Create Internal Project" should only be used by professional services companies, for their internal projects. We highly recommend to stick to the project types from Scope Item / Best Practice 1NT

[former_member95896]

Hi Roland thanks for your response. When our system was implemented, the project solution presented to us to use was 1A8 particularly for our new store construction and that's what we've been testing and training users on to this point along with Purchase Orders. Having played with both now there are a lot of functional elements (like how you enter expenses for the project wbs, not down to the fiscal year/period, and add work items) that are more intuitive so there will definitely need to be some retraining on our end.

From what I gather in your messages, statistical projects (we don't do overhead or revenue or really even many allocations at this point) and potentially investment projects (if we do fixed assets) are what we should be using moving forward. Considering this, for projects spanning multiple depts/cost centers it sounds like we have to at a minimum maintain separate wbs elements, is this the only way?

What about the budget/plan granularity do we have to just pick a month in the year to plug annual spend items? Can we just code the statistical project and plan/budget to a hq cost center and then assign the project wbs element to whatever invoice/cost centers apply?

Example: Say we plan to spend $25,000 on a company holiday party in January but haven't broken that down into cost center/gl granularity, what is the best way to setup a project and budget/plan?

[RolandDP]

rpmuller sorry for the loong delay!

Typically a statistical project is used to track specific spending within a cost center. Example: Marketing department has multiple campaigns and you would represent each campaign with its own statistical project. A statistical Project has a 1:1 relationship with cost center. meaning, you cannot assign one statistical project to multiple cost centers.

If you have spending that crosses multiple cost centers then you could one of three things:

A) as you mentioned create multiple statistical projects, (very master data intensive)

B) create a real overhead project and specify the many cost centers in the settlement rule, together with a percentage that each cost center should receive as their portion of the expense

C) if the percentage settlement from option B is not meeting your needs, then you could use a statistical project for one cost center and use allocations at the end of the month to assess the cost from one cost center to many others.

[RolandDP]

rpmuller As to your question regarding planning / budgeting.

real quick: Financial Planning in SAP always means amounts by account and period and a specific version , budgeting in SAP typically refers to assigning a Dollar amount to a project / cost center without specifying the accounts or periods.

Financial Plan data is used to report plan vs. actual, Budget is used in availability control and to manage spending very pro-actively. We release new functionality here in the last two releases.

In S/4HC and to make things simpler, we now use the same upload app for both budget and plan data . Riwa posted a very comprehensive write up on how to maintain a budget for a given project.