SAP-Centric Projects
In Charge and In Control
|
Costs and budgets are the areas where SAP's project management capabilities truly excel. You may never see another project management tool with so many cost control capabilities. SAP literally has dozens of ways of planning costs, budgeting, and charging actuals to a project, whether on the WBS or activity/operation level. SAP allows up to 999 cost plan versions, typically used for rolling budgets, forecasts, and cost estimates. Cost planning and budgeting can happen top-down or bottom-up.
Cost Planning with SAP
SAP's cost planning capabilities for projects is fully integrated with the controlling module (CO). WBS elements or activities can be senders and receivers of allocations, several kinds of manual cost planning can be performed, and dozens of out-of-the-box reports are available to slice and dice the cost information as required. Through the association of the project structure (e.g., project definition, WBS, activity) it is automatically integrated with profit center accounting.
Structure level cost planning (WBS)
This allows to plan costs as a lump sum over the whole duration of a project (even if multi-year) or by year, or both. This kind of plan is only possible on the WBS level.
Detailed cost planning (WBS or Networks/Activities or Maintenance orders/operations)
SAP lumps together several detailed cost planning transactions, like activity allocations (e.g., 20 H @ $45/hour of resource ABC to be spent on completing one deliverable (WBS element) or task (activity or operation)), material cost planning (e.g., 5 pieces of material or service XYZ), or primary cost element planning (plan by GL expense account).
Activity-based costing (WBS or Networks/Activities or Maintenance orders/operations)
Work centers in SAP contain the logistical definition of available resources, to be used for resource and capacity planning. They derive their cost values from their association with cost centers and activity types (= internal services). A distinct rate can be associated with each cost center/activity type combination, per year. If then a certain number of hours of a specific work center is planned to be used for an activity, these hours are multiplied with their standard cost rate to derive the planned costs.
Allocations
A number of CO allocation transactions can be performed to and by WBS elements or activities as well.
Budgeting with SAP
What SAP calls "budgeting" relates only to approved cost information. It allows to control the approved cost plans on the WBS level.
|
|
|
This Category is currently empty |
|
| Related Items |
|---|