Budget Control System (BCS) 

Use

The functions in the Funds Management (FM) component support budget planning, budget execution and allow you to monitor the availability of funds.

The Budget Control System (BCS) in FM is an alternative to former budgeting. BCS is designed to allow flexible customer-specific adjustments to all important functions.

Implementation Considerations

If you use the Grants Management component integrated with FM, only BCS fulfills the prerequisites necessary for this. This also applies if you want to work with funded programs for the account assignment. The required FM account assignment elements Grant and Funded Program are only supported in BCS.

SAP does not intend BCS and Former Budgeting to be used at the same time. Therefore, menu transactions, functions, and the necessary Customizing are separate. The necessary migration tools are available if you are using Former Budgeting, but want to migrate to BCS.

If you want to use BCS as your operative budgeting tool in Funds Management, you must activate this in the Customizing of Funds Management, under Basic Settings  → Activate Global Functions for Budget Control System (BCS).

Integration

All FM master data is supported in BCS, as well grant and funded program master data.

BCS includes an integrated planning tool with basic functions for budget planning. If you want to use comprehensive budget planning, you can exchange data with SAP’s Strategic Enterprise Management.

You can use BCS together with Position Budgeting and Control (PA-PM-PB).

The Business Information Warehouse System (BW) is available as a comprehensive reporting tool for the Budget Control System.

BCS only works with Funds Management and Grants Management, not with other components that can also budget, such as SAP Controlling.

Features

●      You can select the relevant FM account assignments as budget addresses and posting addresses from the entirety of the master data combinations, by using the functions of the Budget Structure.

●      Budget distribution and the assignment of posting addresses, budget addresses and availability control objects in BCS depend on the master data hierarchy, which you can define as you wish by using derivation strategies defined in Customizing.

●      Customer-definable budget types, entry document types and consistency checks in BCS Budgeting allow you to map the requests of your organization in the system.

●      Budget entry and budget update activities are based on documents and are logged in budget entry documents. You display and maintain these in the Budgeting Workbench.

●      Status Management allows you to subdivide the budget execution process in individual budgeting phases and define specific user roles through different authorization assignments.

●      The BCS Availability Control (AVC) component is a flexible tool that you can customize to monitor and compare budget values and commitment/actual values. You can use independent availability control checks simultaneously.

●      You can distribute budget data between different systems using Application Link Enabling. In this way you can send budget information from a sender to a receiver system, which will then post this budget data.

For more information on the above subjects, refer to the corresponding documentation.

Restrictions

Functions such as Revenues Increasing the Budget (RIB) and budget releases are supported as of Release EA-PS 2.00. As of Release EA-PS 5.00, SAP also provides cover eligibility functionality and support for migration from Former Budgeting to BCS.

The BCS reporting functions are not designed for comprehensive management reporting. For this, use the Business Information Warehouse (BW) system as of Release 3.0B.

SAP recommends that you analyze your organization’s existing functions and requirements before implementing the Budget Control System.