Roll up expenses and resources in an engagement
Summarize
Summary of Roll up expenses and resources in an engagement
This feature in the Audit Management application enables audit managers to consolidate and view all costs, budgets, and resources related to audit engagements in a single, comprehensive view. It leverages the Advanced Audit plugin alongside the Project Portfolio Management application to automate the creation of engagement projects and roll up financial and resource data for better management and oversight.
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Key Features
- Advanced Audit Plugin Activation: Enables automatic creation of engagement projects and consolidation of expenses and resources across engagements.
- Project Budget Rollup: Users with the itportfoliomanager role can create project budgets which synchronize budget costs to the engagement’s Budgeted expenses field, allowing updates and overwrites as budgets change.
- Actual Expenses and Resources Rollup: Actual effort and cost updates on engagement projects are automatically reflected in the corresponding engagement’s actual resources and expenses.
- Resource Plan Rollup: Resource plans in an Allocated state automatically sum confirmed and allocated hours into the planned resources on the engagement project; manual edits to planned hours are disabled unless the resource plan is deleted.
- Cost Plan Rollup: Independent cost plans restrict manual entry in the Planned expenses field on the engagement form but still allow editing of planned resources.
Key Outcomes
- Audit managers gain a consolidated and real-time view of all financial and resource data related to audit engagements, improving budget tracking and resource allocation.
- Budget changes at the project level are automatically propagated to engagements, ensuring financial accuracy and up-to-date reporting.
- Resource planning is streamlined through automated rollups, preventing manual errors and enabling precise allocation visibility.
- The integration with Project Portfolio Management enhances audit planning capabilities by connecting project management and audit expense/resource tracking seamlessly.
Any audit project has associated costs, budgets, and resources. Roll ups of these costs, budgets, and resources enable the audit manager to view the entire costs and resources in a consolidated manner.
Starting with the new release, a new plugin called Advanced Audit has been introduced in the Audit Management application. When you activate the Advanced Audit plugin and install the Project Portfolio Management application, you can utilize the project management capabilities to automatically create engagement projects.
When an audit plan is created, the audit manager must be able to view the complete expenses and the resources involved in the engagement. Activating the Advanced Audit plugin enables the rollup of the expenses and resources cost of all engagements for a consolidated view. You can also use the advanced planning capabilities to automatically roll up the expenses and resources of each individual engagement to the parent plan of the engagements.
Project budget rollup
After an engagement project is automatically created, if the user has the it_portfolio_manager role, the user can create a project budget. When a budget is created, the budget cost gets copied over to the Budgeted expenses field of the engagement from the engagement project. When you use the advanced planning capabilities to automatically create a plan, the values in the expenses and the resources field are rolled up from the associated engagements and the engagement projects. To allocate a project budget, see Allocate budget to a project. If you allocate a project budget, then the data from the budget cost field gets copied over to the engagement. For example, if you have an engagement where the budget expense is $100. Then, if you create a project budget for the engagement project of this engagement, and enter the budget cost as $200, then the budget expense of $100 in the engagement is overwritten and replaced by $200.
Actual expenses and resources rollup
If actual effort is updated on an engagement project, then that value gets copied over to actual resources on the engagement. The Actual resources and Actual expenses both are copied over from the Actual effortand Actual cost fields.
Resource plan rollup
With Project Portfolio Management, you can add resource plans and cost plans to an engagement. To learn how to create an engagement with advanced planning, see Create an engagement with advanced planning
After you create a resource plan and it is in the Allocated state, all the confirmed and allocated hours from the resource plan are summed up in the planned resources on the engagement project. When a resource plan is created, you cannot manually enter the hours in the Planned resources field on the engagement form as the values get automatically rolled up. To manually enter hours in the Planned resources field, you must delete the resource plan that you have created.
Cost plan rollup
If you create an independent cost plan that is not created as a result of a resource plan, then you cannot manually enter values in the Planned expenses field on the engagement form. You can still edit the Planned resources field.