If cost planning and controlling are the most important factors in a project, then enter the expected costs, activities, and business processes in manual cost planning. You can use manual cost planning to compare planning and actual costs, and thus make a differentiated variance analysis.

If you enter planning values on the lower planning elements, then the system totals values in an upward direction (bottom-up planning). Alternatively, you can manually distribute the planning values from the planning elements at the top to those below (top-down planning).

There are different types of planning and functions, which cover the different levels of detail in the various phases of a project:

Integrated planning for projects enables you to settle planning data or business processes and to pass them on the profit center and the general ledger.

Integrated planning for projects corresponds to integrated planning for internal orders.

Plan-integrated projects enable you to plan cost elements and activity inputs integrated with cost centers and business processes in a plan version. The system updates allocations directly to the cost center or the business process.

You can only plan costs and activities locally on non-plan-integrated projects. There is no planning on the cost centers or business processes used.

Information on a project can change during the planning phase. Cost planning in more than one version is therefore useful. This corresponds to the planning process in normal business practice. You can plan projects in as many CO-versions as you wish.

The work breakdown structure provides you with different planning types on the WBS element. This is independent of the project status and the level of detail required.

You can use these types of planning individually or together, so you can use unit costing or cost element planning for certain subtasks in a planning element for example, depending on the information that you have available. This enables you to estimate the costs of the remaining tasks using hierarchy planning.

Hierarchy planning is the simplest way of planning costs. This type of planning does not depend on cost elements. The planning values are entered and displayed in a hierarchy.

• Removing cost information from comparison objects.
• Deriving costs from contract totals.

If you have more information during planning, then hierarchy planning is a useful start for two alternative types of more detailed project cost planning.