Financial Management for licensed SPM users
Summarize
Summary of Financial Management for licensed SPM users
This content describes the Financial Management capabilities available to Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) users who have activated Financial Management within ServiceNow. It focuses on the Service Offering Costing cost model, which helps evaluate and allocate expenses across different service levels to provide detailed costing insights.
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Key Features
- Service Offering Costing Cost Model: This base system cost model allocates expenses and generates cost lines at each service level. It uses data from the IT Shared Service ([itfmsharedservice]) and Service Offering ([serviceoffering]) tables.
- Data Source: Spend data is manually entered directly into the cost model, as there is no default integration with the general ledger. Optional configuration allows use of the general ledger as a spend data source.
- Expense Allocation: Expenses are allocated from IT Shared Services segment to Service Offering segment using an Equal rollup method by default. This method can be customized to meet specific needs.
- Prescribed Metrics: Three key metrics allocate shared service costs to service offerings:
- Allocation Maps: Weights costs based on actual consumption data stored in the Service Offering Allocation Map table, linking IT Shared Services and Service Offerings.
- Related Configuration Items (CIs): Allocates costs based on the count and relationships of configuration items from the CMDB.
- Total Subscribers: Allocates costs by summing subscribers associated with each Service Offering.
Practical Use for ServiceNow Customers
ServiceNow customers with licensed SPM can leverage the Service Offering Costing model to:
- Gain visibility into spending at various service levels, enabling better financial control and decision-making.
- Allocate shared IT service costs accurately across service offerings using configurable metrics and allocation methods.
- Input and manage spend information flexibly, either manually or via optional general ledger integration.
- Customize allocation rollup methods and weighting metrics to reflect organizational cost distribution accurately.
By configuring the service offering costing model and using allocation maps, customers can align expense allocation with actual service consumption, thereby improving cost transparency and financial planning within their strategic portfolio management processes.
If you are a Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) user and have activated Financial Management, then the base system provides you with a Service Offering Costing cost model. Use this cost model to evaluate the amount spent at each level of service. Financial Modeling allocates expenses and generates cost lines based on the level of service for a defined price.
Service Offering Costing cost model
The specifications of the Service Offering Costing cost model are:
- IT shared service segment accounts are sourced from the IT shared service [itfm_shared_service] table.
- Service Offering segment accounts are sourced from the Service Offering [service_offering] table.
- IT Shared Service segment rolls up to the Service Offering segment. However, there are no default rollup overrides.
- All sub-buckets are spread equally to all accounts in IT Shared Services provided by the base system setup.
- There is no data source to this cost model, which means that you should enter the spend information directly into the model and not come from the general ledger. Using the general ledger as a source of spend information is an optional feature that you can configure. See Prerequisites to modify data source of a cost model for more information.
- The expenses are allocated from IT Shared Services segment to the Service Offering segment by Equal method of the base system. By default, the allocation setup provided in the Allocation Setup stage is Equal rollup method. You can configure the rollup method, if needed, to match your specific requirements.
Seeded IT Shared Services
See the list of seeded IT Shared Services.
ITFM prescribed metrics
- Allocate to Service Offering on Allocation Maps
The metric allocates shared service cost to service offering based on the following weighted metric:
Figure 2. Allocate to service offering on allocation maps - The Service Offering Allocation Map [itfm_service_offering_allocation_map] provides a list of all service offering allocations. This intermediary table references IT shared services from IT shared service [itfm_shared_service] table and service offering from the Service Offering [service_offering] table.
- The prescribed metric performs a sum of shared services and weights the costs accordingly to the receiving service offerings.
- Allocate to Service Offerings on related CIs
The metric allocates shared service cost to service offerings based on the following weighting table:
Figure 3. Allocate to service offering on allocation maps - The CI Relationship [cmdb_rel_ci] table provides a list of all relationships between configuration items.
- The prescribed metric performs a count of configuration items and weights the costs accordingly to the receiving service offerings.
- Allocate to Service Offerings on Total Subscribers
The metric allocates shared service cost to service offerings based on the following weighting table:
Figure 4. Allocate to service offerings on total subscribers 
- The Service Offering [service_offering] table provides a list of all service offerings.
- The prescribed metric performs a sum of all subscribers and weights the costs accordingly to the receiving service offering by Sys ID.