Using Easy Cost Planning (SAP Library - Internal Service Requests)

Using Easy Cost Planning

Use

You use Easy Cost Planning to calculate the costs for planning objects (such as internal orders, WBS elements, internal service requests, or appropriation requests) or generally to determine costs for a specific purpose using an ad hoc cost estimate.

Integration

Cost planning is activated through the corresponding application component, such as Internal Orders (CO-OM-OPA), Project System (PS), SAP Internet Applications, Investment Management (IM), or Product Cost Planning (CO-PC-PCP).

Prerequisites

If you want to use a planning form for the cost estimate, you must have already defined the planning form in the system. For more information, see Editing Costing Models and Assigning Attributes.

Before you can plan costs, a costing variant must have been defined in Customizing for the object to be planned. If you want to be able to see groups of costs, you must have defined cost component groups in Customizing for the application component concerned under Define Cost Component Structure.

Features

The costing screen is laid out as follows:

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text

Caution

Depending on the settings for the role to which you have been assigned, you may not be able to use all of the functions described below.

You can do the following:

Vary the size of the screen areas
Display or hide the costing structure, worklists, and item view

Costing Structure Area

The top node is the object being planned or the ad hoc cost estimate. You cannot cost structure nodes, meaning you cannot assign them a planning form. For project structures, these are WBS elements which are not planning elements.

You can structure the object you are planning or your ad hoc cost estimate by adding new nodes (costing nodes). Select the node that you want to substructure and choose . Enter a description and choose . The node is added. The costs are calculated separately for each costing node.

To delete a costing node, select it and choose . Technically, this deletes a cost estimate.

You can use to close the cost estimate and prevent further changes from being made to it. The close is recorded in the history. You can check this in the header data. There you can undo or set the closing of a cost estimate. If you want to undo it, choose again.

The document flow () shows for each costing item whether documents have been posted through an Execution Service for this costing item and object to be planned.

Worklist Area

If you regularly create cost estimates using Easy Cost Planning, you can load the planning forms that you use frequently into your worklist. To do this either choose immediately next to the node or choose .

You can create, insert (), rename, and restrict () worklists, as well as modify what users can display them (change from user-specific to role-specific or all users). Use to call up any worklists that are in the system but have not yet been displayed. To delete worklists, choose . To remove subdirectories or planning forms from a worklist, choose . To save your worklists, choose in the screen area Worklists.

Item View Area

This area is used to enter, change, and display costing items. For more information, see Creating Costing Items under the heading Features. It is not possible to make entries in the detail screen.

The item category for planning forms is J. For more information about item categories, see Master Data for Unit Costing. You cannot use item categories O or S in Easy Cost Planning.

Note

The item number does not necessarily reflect the position of the row in the item view. If you want to have the rows listed in order of item numbers, define a layout that sorts the rows on the item number.

For WBS elements and internal orders you can define a time frame for a costing item by entering a latest end date. The costs are distributed uniformly across the periods in the time frame you defined.

Further Item View Functions

	The log of the costing node currently selected is displayed.
	Revaluate the costing items with the current prices.
	Refresh the totals and subtotals
	You can overwrite the price, cost element or the description for an item with the current plan and master data. To do this select the row.
Goto ® Triggered itemization on/off	If you have costed several costing nodes in one structure, all of the costing items for all costing nodes in this structure are displayed in the itemization triggered. The top node in the costing structure must be selected for this. The display can be seen in the item view. By choosing you can multiply the quantities of individual costing items by a factor. The change is accepted immediately and the costing repeated.

For more information on working with this type of list display, see SAP List Viewer.

To cost the entries or changes, choose Confirm.

Functions in the Upper Application Toolbar

Show Execution Services	After cost planning you can trigger Execution Services for some objects.
	Display header data
	You can switch between various currencies.
	Only displayed for ad hoc cost estimates
	Explains all of the symbol legends in the costing structure
	The error messages for all costing nodes are displayed together.

Activities

Create either the object you want to plan or an ad hoc cost estimate, or call up an existing one in change mode. Choose cost planning. For more information, see the documentation for the objects being planned:

For internal orders: Easy Cost Planning for Internal Orders

For WBS elements: Using Easy Cost Planning

For appropriation requests: editing cost estimates for appropriation requests

For ad hoc cost estimates: executing ad hoc cost estimates

You have the following options for calculating the planned costs:

With Planning Forms

Click on the node to be costed in the costing structure. Choose Choose Planning Form in the right-hand screen area and select a planning form (costing model). Or, if you have already loaded the required planning form, click on the corresponding node for the planning form in the worklist. The system displays the entry screen.

If you have selected the wrong planning form you can assign a new one. To do so, you must select the costing node. You now have the following options:

From the worklist choose a new planning form by clicking on the corresponding node, and confirm the prompt with Yes.
Choose and confirm the prompt with Yes, choose Choose Planning Form in the right-hand screen area and select a new planning form.

Enter the required planning data and choose Confirm.
You can change the costing items in the item view.

Without Planning Forms

Your role must allow you to display the item view.

Click on the node to be costed in the costing structure. Enter the costing items directly in the item view.

Result

The results are displayed directly in the costing structure for every costing node. The costs are displayed broken down into costing items. In essence, this display corresponds both in use and structure to valuated BOMs in unit costing. The symbols next to the costing items specify the item category. By choosing for the legends you can ascertain which item category you are dealing with.

The costing items are displayed in a nonhierarchical list in the item view. This essentially corresponds to the display of the itemization. This means the respective costing items for the currently selected costing node are displayed The standard SAP system provides a variety of itemization layouts. You can adapt these to meet your individual requirements by creating your own layouts. Using various factors, you can calculate and delete subtotals.

Note

When currencies are translated, the system uses the exchange rate applicable on the valuation date of the cost estimate (and not the costing item, if they are different).

The values on the upper-level costing nodes are only the same as the sum of the values of the lower-level items if all costs are relevant to roll-up. This is specified in the cost component structure in Customizing. In addition, cost elements must be assigned to all items.

Caution

If you leave Easy Cost Planning with , you cost estimate is temporarily saved. The cost estimate is only saved to the database when you save the object being planned. Exception: Ad hoc cost estimates. In this case the system asks whether you want to save the data directly upon leaving Easy Cost Planning. If you choose No, the data is not saved and is lost.

You cannot save or leave the cost estimate if it contains errors. For this reason, you can only leave a cost estimate that contains errors by canceling with .

For internal orders, WBS elements, and ad hoc cost estimates, you can now trigger Execution Services.