The most important task of an investment program is to manage planned costs and approved budget values for a given time period.

Budget values are different from plan values in regard to how binding they are. In the planning phase, you have to estimate the costs for a program position as exactly as possible. In the approval phase, the funds are supplied in the form of the budget, which is thereby more binding.

You can plan costs for an investment program either directly on the program positions, or by rolling up planned costs from the measures and appropriation requests assigned to the measures.

You have to have defined planning profiles and budget profiles in Customizing. You assign a planning profile and a budget profile to each program type. This allows you to control planning and budgeting differently for each program type.

You have to have created a program definition and program positions, and also have assigned measures and appropriation requests to the program positions.

Implementation Guide (IMG): Investment Programs ® Planning in Program ® Cost Planning ® Maintain Planning Profiles or Budgeting in Program ® Define Budget Profiles for Investment Programs

• When you use the Open New Approval Year – Repeat Run function, the carryforward of measures and appropriation requests and their values is statistical only. The carryforward is needed here only for the purposes of reporting.

• When you use the Closing the Old Approval Year function, the measures and appropriation requests that are carried forward are actually operative in the new investment program. The operative plan and budget values of the new investment program are increased consistently by the amounts carried forward.

You can get an overview of your planned and budgeted investments in the Information System of Investment Management.