Managing portfolio financials in Strategic Planning Workspace
Summarize
Summary of Managing portfolio financials in Strategic Planning Workspace
In the Strategic Planning Workspace (Yokohama release), ServiceNow customers can effectively manage and monitor portfolio financials by viewing rolled-up financial data for top-level demands, projects, and epics. The portfolio financials view provides insights into approved budgets, forecasts, variances, actual costs, and remaining estimates across Capex, Opex, total costs, and benefits. This detailed financial visibility enables portfolio managers to track financial performance, avoid overspending, and make informed decisions during portfolio planning and prioritization cycles.
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Key Features
- Financial Breakdown: View financial metrics such as Budget, Forecast, Variance, Actuals, and Remaining Estimates by expense type or cost type, configurable as per budget attributes.
- Portfolio-Level Rollup: Aggregate financials at portfolio level across various planning items like Demands, Epics, and Projects (fiscal calendar configuration required).
- Grouping and Filtering: Default grouping by budget approval status (approved, pending approval) with options to customize grouping and columns for focused analysis.
- Time Scale Customization: Analyze portfolio financials by fiscal month (up to 12 months), quarter (up to 4 quarters), year (up to 5 years), or entire portfolio timeline to gain granular temporal insights.
- Export Capability: Export financial data to Excel or CSV formats for offline analysis or reporting.
- Direct Access: Select any planning item from the grid to open its detailed financial record page quickly.
- Personalization: Customize both left and right grids with relevant columns and groupings to tailor views for specific financial comparisons such as budget versus actuals.
Important Considerations
- Configuration is required for both new and existing customers to enable portfolio financials visibility.
- The current portfolio financials view does not support Investment Funding integration; budget values from Investment Funding may not display correctly and will be supported in a future release.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
This capability empowers portfolio managers to:
- Track financial health and status of planning items across the portfolio.
- Make data-driven decisions on prioritization and funding allocations for upcoming portfolio cycles.
- Prevent budget overruns by comparing approved budgets with forecasts and actual expenditures.
- Gain flexible, customizable financial views tailored to their organizational needs and reporting requirements.
View the financial breakdown of estimates, approved costs, benefits, and actuals and so on for portfolio financials.
As a portfolio user, you can view the rolled up financial values of top-level demands, projects, and epics.
You can view the costs by expense type or cost type. Using the Financials view at portfolio level, you can view different financial fields such as Budget (approved budget for planning items), Forecast, Variance (difference between the approved budget and latest forecast), Actuals, and the Remaining Estimates for Capex, Opex, Total, and Benefits for each planning item. This information can be used to track the financials status of the planning items and take an informed decision on which planning items to consider while working on the next planning cycle and track the to avoid overspending.
- Track the financial performance and status of planning items.
- Arrive at an informed decision by analyzing the estimated cost and benefits of a planning item while planning and prioritizing for the next Portfolio cycle.
- View the financials based on the expense type or cost type depending on the budget attribute configuration.
- Avoid overspending on planning items by comparing the approved budget with the latest forecast and actuals.
The portfolio financials view supports Demands, Epics, and Projects with Fiscal Calendar type configuration only.
In the left-grid, planning item details such as name, rank, planning state, planning item type, approved start date, total planned cost, total actual costs, total planned benefits and ROI for the full planning item duration.
You can export the portfolio financials details to Excel or CSV using the Export option (
).
Customize your financials view
Customize the portfolio financials to view and access the required parameters helping you in better planning your portfolio and planning items.
- You can get a more detailed and granular view of the financials at monthly, quarterly, and yearly view by defining Timescale and Range. Use time scale to select a fiscal period and filter the range within the time scale to
view the financials for any specific months, quarters, or years.
Table 1. Time scale and range parameters Time scale Description and range Fiscal Month Portfolio financials view by monthly breakdown. You can select up to 12 months.
Fiscal Quarter Portfolio financials view by quarterly breakdown. You can select up to 4 quarters.
Fiscal Year Portfolio financials view by yearly breakdown. You can select up to 5 years period.
Plan Timeline Portfolio financial breakdown for the entire portfolio timeline. - Personalize grouping and columns in the grids.
Configure the columns and groupings in the right-grid using Personalize option (
) to build a custom view.For example, if you want to compare budget and actuals breakdowns, select only these two options and apply your preferences. You can also customize the left-grid by selecting the required columns from the Left Grid list from the personalize settings.
- Group the planning items.
By default, the financials view is grouped by the Budget status column. You can remove Budget status grouping from the Grouped by row and drag-drop the required header to change this view.