Table of Contents

Resource Plan as Financial Forecast

Description

Resource to Finance Sync provides the ability to synchronise data from the Resource Plan for a project into the Financial Forecasts for the project. This feature will allow project managers to use their Resource Plan to populate their Resource Forecast Costs within the Finance app.

Resource to Finance Sync does not happen automatically. Project Managers can select to perform the Import/Sync operation from the Finance Grid for their project. The interface for select to Import provides opportunity to review the expected high level outcome of an import operation before selecting to save those changes into the Finance Grid.

Project Managers only need to Save their Resource Plan, they don't need to Submit it, for this feature to work (dependent on calculation mode - see below).

An alert will show on the project Financials screen if any changes have been made to the Resource Plan that need to be synchronised into the Financial Forecasts. This alert will only show if the resource that has been modified has a rate against them and there are new financial forecast records to be imported.

Image shows the project alert on the Financials screen that will show when the Resource Plan has been updated and there is new data to import

An alert will also be shown on the New Status Update page within the Financials KPI Forecast cell if there are changes to the Resource Plan that impact this value that haven't been synchronised.

To assist in understanding the calculations made in a Resource to Finance Sync transaction, a summary is shown as a tooltip when a user hovers over a related financial transaction item in the Finance Grid forms.

Note

Resource Plan as Financial Forecast Sync uses the Financial Item Type 'Cost' (955000001) and Financial Transaction Type 'Forecast' (955000001) when generating Financial Items and Financial Transactions.

Configuration settings

Image shows the Configuration screen for the Resource to Finance sync

Display Name: Resource Finance Sync
Name: resourceFinanceSync

The Resource Finance Sync configuration setting provides access to the following settings;

  • Allow Resource to Finance Sync: Set to 'Yes' by default. Can optionally be turned to 'No' if the functionality is not required in an environment.
  • Calculation Mode: Sets the calculation mode that will be used in the environment. Default mode is now 'Proposed only'.
  • Default Cost Category: Sets the system level Default Cost Category (Financial Category).
  • Rate Type: Sets whether the Cost (default) or Sell rate for Resources should be used when calculating the Forecast Cost for Resource Plan entries.

Calculation Modes

Highest Value

This calculation mode will take the 'highest' value (of Draft (saved but not submitted), Proposed and Committed hours) at the day level and multiply by the relevant Rate for that Resource for that day.
In this mode, in instances where a fulfillment row committed hours are less than the proposed hours from its parent request, then the 'short' hours will be calculated against the Bookable Resource for the parent request and the entire short hours calculation will be placed in the last fiscal period/month relating to that Request row.

Example 1:

This Generic role request is fulfilled by a fulfillment resource, but the fulfillment resource is only allocated 90 hours, not the 100 requested, therefore not 100% of the effort.

Image shows the Resource Plan screen showing the two Resources and their assigned hours

When this information is imported into the Financials app:

  • the fulfillment Resource will have 90 hours imported and converted into Proposed dollars.
  • the generic Resource will have 10 hours imported and converted into Proposed dollars. The system calculates this value based on the original Proposed amount minus the amount fulfilled.

This is only relevant for fulfillment requests and works the same for named and generic resources

Example 2:

If you modify the Proposed values within the Resource Plan to match the values that have been Committed, this will not trigger this Highest Value calculation to trigger. In this example the Proposed values within the Resource Plan have been updated manually on the Parent and fulfillment resource to look like the following:

Image shows the Resource Plan screen showing the two Resources and their assigned hours after they have been edited

When this information is imported into the Financials app:

  • only the fulfillment Resource will have 90 hours imported and converted into Proposed dollars
  • the generic resource will be ignored, because the new proposed value of 10 hours is less than 90 hours that have been committed.

Proposed only (default)

This calculation mode will take the 'highest' value (of Draft (saved but not submitted), and Proposed hours) at the day level and multiple by the relevant Rate for that Resource for that day.
Resources added directly by a Resource Manager on the Resource Demand screen will not be automatically calculated in this mode because those resources' requests do not get populated with Proposed hours unless the proposed hours are manually entered into the Resource Plan after the fulfilment resource has been added.

Committed only

This calculation mode will consider only the Committed hours at the day level and multiple by the relevant Rate for that Resource for that day. Committed hours will be calculated wherever they are present against either a parent resource request or a fulfilment resource.

Rules

The Sync can be configured to calculate the Forecast costs based on the Cost rate (default) or Sell rate of the Resource. If a Resource's corresponding rate is not set, then no Forecast data will be created for that Resource. Likewise if data in any period for a Resource calculates to 0, then no transaction will be created for that period for that Resource.

When calculating the data to be used from the Resource Plan, the selected Calculation Mode identified in the configuration setting will determine how the calculation is performed.

If Fiscal Periods have been created in an environment, then Resource to Finance Sync data will be aggregated at the day level with transactions being set to the first day of the Fiscal Period that Resource Plan data relates to. If Fiscal Periods do not exist in an environment, then transactions will be aggregated at the day level with the transaction being set to the first day of the related Month.

Note

Financial Forecast data from Resource to Finance Sync will not be added, updated or deleted into a locked Fiscal Period.

Cost Category defaults - The cost category for Financial Items created by the Resource to Finance Sync functionality are determined as follows;

  1. If a Default Cost Category has been set for the project, then that Cost Category will be used.

    • This Default Cost Category field can be found on the Override Sell Rates tab on the Project.

  2. Otherwise, if a Default Cost Category has been set for the related Bookable Resource, then that Cost Category will be used.

    • This Default Cost Category field can be found on the General tab on the Resource.

  3. Otherwise the System level Default Cost Category (as defined in the Configuration Setting) will be used.

    • This Default Cost Category field can be found on the Resource Finance Sync Configuration Setting.

Once a Financial Item has been created by Resource to Finance Sync, Project Managers can set the Cost Category to another value as required and it will not be overwritten by future sync activities.

Currency Precision

Note that the currency precision settings in the environment will affect the accuracy at which the forecast values are calculated. More information [here] (../Projects/Financials.md#currency-precision).

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