Financial planning for Projects and Demands

  • Release version: Washingtondc
  • Updated February 1, 2024
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Financial Planning for Projects and Demands

    The Financial Planning feature within ServiceNow's Strategic Portfolio Management enables project managers and financial users to effectively plan, re-forecast, and track financials for projects, demands, or epics. This functionality provides a comprehensive view of actual and planned expenses over the fiscal period, allowing users to make informed financial decisions.

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    Key Features

    • Financial Forecasting: Enter high-level forecasts and detailed breakdowns for operational and capital expenditures.
    • Cost Plans and Expense Management: Create, edit, and delete cost plans and expense lines easily from the user-friendly interface.
    • Re-forecasting: Utilize in-line editing to update planned expenses and generate labor costs based on resource assignments.
    • Financial Baselines: Create and compare financial baselines to analyze variances between actual and forecasted costs.
    • Customizable Views: Tailor the left pane to display cost plan attributes such as total planned costs and expense types, and use widgets for various financial metrics.
    • Export Options: Download cost or baseline comparisons in Excel or CSV formats for further analysis.

    Key Outcomes

    By leveraging the financial planning capabilities, ServiceNow customers can ensure accurate financial management of their projects. Users can expect to enhance their visibility into planned and actual costs, enabling more strategic decision-making and effective resource allocation. The ability to analyze variances and generate forecasts promotes better budgeting and financial forecasting, ultimately leading to improved project outcomes.

    Plan, re-forecast, track the financials, and create baselines for planning items such as projects, demands, or epics.

    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 tab.
    • View the rollups of Planned costs, Actuals costs, and Planned benefit for each Epic in the Prioritization grid.
    • Add, edit, or delete cost plans effortlessly from the Cost screen.
    • 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 EAC (Estimate at Completion), ETC (Estimate to Completion), and Actuals to date 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 Planning attributes.
    • Add or edit expense lines against the cost plans easily 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 planning items.
    • 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.
    Financials screen.
    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 – The currency defined and used to calculate the financials.
    • Customizable widgets showing different financial information such as allocated budget, total latest costs (EAC), Variance (the difference between budget and EAC), breakdown of planned costs, and actuals to date by cost type.
    • 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 attribute-based resource assignments only.
    • Left 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, view the total actuals to date, Total EAC (Estimate at completion) and Total ETC (Estimate to completion) for the selected Time scope duration, Actual expenses against a cost plan for the past fiscal periods, actuals to date, EAC, and ETC for the current fiscal year, and planned costs for the current and future fiscal periods.
      Note:
      The header rows of actuals and planned expenses are color-coded differently to help you easily identify and differentiate between the expense types. The legend is marked against the Time scale field.
    • 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.