Opening a New Approval Year

Purpose

Generally, you create a new investment program for the new approval year at the time of the fiscal year change or year-end closing. The IM fiscal year change enables you to create a new investment program in the new approval year that has the same structure as the existing investment program.

You choose how you want to report on the new investment program. Reports on the investment program can be based on one of the following:

  • Just the measures and appropriation requests of the new approval year

  • The measures and appropriation requests of the new approval year, plus the carried forward measures and appropriation requests of the old approval year that are still open

The Open New Approval Year function, with its carryforward functions, can establish a connection between the new investment program and old, still open measures and requests and their values from the old approval year for reporting purposes.

Process Flow

Using the Open New Fiscal Year function, you can transfer all measures and appropriation requests that are not closed to the new investment program. The system does not transfer any closed measures, or any that were not implemented. After the fiscal year change, you can use the investment program for budgeting new investment measures.

Fiscal Year Change

After the Open New Approval Yea r function was carried out, you can modify the structure of the new investment program. You can create new positions and move existing positions (refer to Creating the Program Positions and Structure ). Carry out the planning and budgeting of the new positions as usual (refer to Planning (Bottom Up ) and Investment Program Budgeting (Top Down) ).

Parameters for the Open New Approval Year Function

When you start the Open New Approval Year function, you have to set various parameters:

  • Copy program structure

The system copies the structure of the old investment program and uses it to generate the new investment program. The approval year is automatically increased by one. The program structure and the program position IDs are not changed.

  • Carry forward measures/appropriation requests

The system carries forward old measures and appropriation requests to the investment program in the new approval year. The objects not carried forward are:

  • Measures or appropriation requests with Closed status

  • Appropriation requests with Rejected or Replaced by measure status

If you want to exclude other measures or appropriation requests in addition to the above, you can do so with the help of a status selection profile (selection according to a certain system status or user status). When this method is used, the system can always identify old measures and old appropriation requests as having been forwarded. It can also distinguish the old measures and requests from those directly assigned to the program in the new approval year. The results are as follows:

  • You can run reports on the new investment program either with or without the old measures and appropriation requests. The standard drilldowns in the IM Information System are defined so that they report on both old and new measures and appropriation requests. The general value list in the IM-Information System (program RAIMINFO), on the other hand, reports as a default only on the new measures and appropriation requests. However, if you set the Old values and meas./req. also indicator in the initial screen of the report, you can also report on old and new measures/appropriation requests at the same time.

Caution Caution

When you use the budget distribution function (refer to Distributing the Budget from the Program Position to the Measures ), you can either budget the new measures (standard), or you can also distribute a supplement from the new investment program to the old measures.

As a result, a measure could have budget amounts from both the new investment program and the old investment program. This should normally be avoided. You should do this only in rare cases if there is a well-founded reason.

If you want old and new measures to be treated the same during budget distribution in the new investment program, then use the Closing Old Approval Year function.

You have the option of transferring unused budgets and commitments for investment measures (orders and WBS elements) into the new year. If you want to use this option, you should make this transfer before you perform the Open New Approval Year function for the investment program. In this way, you ensure that the already updated annual values of the investment measures are carried forward during the opening of a new approval year.

End of the caution.

  • Carry forward budget values

You should always set this indicator, if you have set the Carry fwd. meas./app.req. (carry forward measures/appropriation requests) indicator. In this way, you ensure that the total of the transferred measure budgets increases the program budget of the new investment program for reporting in a consistent manner (budget carryforward). This also ensures that the difference between the program budget and the measure budget in reporting of the new investment program is unaffected by whether you choose to report with or without old measures and appropriation requests. This means that the free program budget displayed in reporting is always the free budget of the new investment program. However, there is no effect on the operative budget of the new investment program.

The system manages the budget carried forward separately from the current budget of the new investment program. After the fiscal year change has been carried out, the budget carryforward is included in reports only when you run reports on old and new measures/appropriation requests at the same time. In order to see the budget carryforward in the budgeting function for the original budget of the new investment program (rather than the current budget), you have to set the approval period to Forward under Start of the navigation path Settings Next navigation step Approval Period End of the navigation path in the initial screen. However, you normally never process this budget carryforward manually. Instead it is always updated as part of the fiscal year change.

  • Carry forward plan values

Setting this indicator has essentially the same effect as setting the Carry forward budget values indicator, except it applies, of course, to plan values.

Versions for Plan Values

You can manage plan values for the investment program in several versions (refer to Versions for Planning ). Therefore, you have to enter the target versions at the time of the fiscal year change. The system then enters the forwarded plan values in these versions. As the source version, however, the system uses the version of the old approval year that was designated for the carryforward in Customizing. (In Customizing for Investment Management , choose Start of the navigation path Investment Programs Next navigation step Planning in Program Next navigation step Versions Next navigation step Assign Version to an Approval Year or Program Type) End of the navigation path . If this indicator is not set for any version in Customizing, then the system uses version 0.