Preliminary Costing and Quotation Creation 

Purpose

You can calculate the planned costs and revenues for a project before this project has been transferred. You can then create a quotation on this basis.

The process described in the following illustrates steps five and six of the process From the Opportunity to the Sales Order in detail. This example uses only simulations, but that is sufficient to understand the function. You can also perform the process with operational projects.

To illustrate the entire process with all its functions, it is assumed that you have decided to calculate revenues with the dynamic item processor (DIP) and that you create the quotation from within sales pricing. If you do not want to create a quotation from sales pricing, do not carry out steps five and six listed here. Then you can also use the revenue rates from cProjects (revenue calculation type Use Cost/Revenue Rates from cProjects).

From cProjects 4.00, preliminary costing is in the form of an ad hoc cost estimate.

Prerequisites

●      You have made the necessary settings for cost calculation. For more information, see Costing Logic.

●      You have selected the revenue calculation type Use Sales Pricing in SAP ERP for the project type you are using for the simulation in Customizing for Collaboration Projects by choosing Connection to External Systems → Accounting Integration → Make General Settings.

●      You have made the necessary settings for Easy Cost Planning. For more information, see Ad Hoc Cost Estimate for cProjects under “Prerequisites.”

●      You have made the necessary settings for the DIP. For more information, see Sales Pricing for cProjects under “Prerequisites.”

This setting is only needed if you want to perform the process as it is described here.

●      You can use the fields Grouping and Search Field to specify the materials in the quotation. To do this, you must have executed the steps for adding the characteristics Grouping or Search Field to the DIP profile. For more information, see SAP Note 301117.

●      You have created a simulation, created an object link to an SD inquiry or quotation for it, and assigned an organizational unit. The first item of this SD document is used for referencing in sales pricing. This SD document item must have a requirements type with a requirements class to which an account assignment category is assigned that has the value E (Accounting via sales order) in the Consumption Posting field. This creates a separate CO object for each SD document. You define the requirements class in Customizing for SAP ECC, for example by choosing Sales and Distribution → Basic Functions → Account Assignment/Costing → Maintain Requirements Classes For Costing/Account Assignment.

Process Flow

The following graphic shows the sequence of steps:

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       1.      You plan the required capacity and the project roles and resources.

If you want to influence the items in the quotation that you create in step six, you can use the fields Grouping or Search Field, for example. You can use the value that you enter here to derive materials for the quotation items through the DIP profile. This enables you to structure the quotation in cProjects according to the level of detail and language that the customer has selected. The materials selected in this way are available in sales pricing (see step five) for manual conditions (surcharges or discounts).

In addition to the materials you specified with the fields Grouping or Search Field, materials and services for the quotation items can be determined in Easy Cost Planning if you have not entered anything in the fields for the individual phases or tasks or if additional items are added by means of a planning form in the ad hoc cost estimate. There can also be additional items (such as for travel expenses) that you enter in the ad hoc cost estimate.

       2.      You calculate the costs and revenues. Choose Cost on the Accounting tab page. For more information about calculating costs and revenues, see Costing Logic.

The costing result is displayed.

The consultant Caren Johnson has the role Consultant 1. The planned required capacity for this role is ten days. Five days are assigned to Caren Johnson, while an additional five days are still unassigned. The hourly rate for Caren Johnson from the business partner is €110, which differs from the project role rate of €100.

The Costs column in the line for the project role has the total amount of €8,400 for the project role based on the specific rate for Caren Johnson and the rate for the project role for the unassigned days. The column for the non-aggregated costs (N-A.Costs) in the line for the project role only shows the €4,000 for the unassigned five days for which no resource has been assigned.

       3.      Save your entries.

       4.      You now call up Easy Cost Planning (ECP) and can add additional costing items. For more information, see Ad Hoc Cost Estimate for cProjects.

       5.      You call up sales pricing. For more information, see Sales Pricing for cProjects.

       6.      You create a quotation. To do this, you choose  Quotation in the sales pricing function.

Changes that you make to the quotation here are not transferred to sales pricing, the ad hoc cost estimate, or cProjects.

You can also create the quotation later by calling up the ad hoc cost estimate again.

       7.      Save your entries and return to the project in cProjects. Perform costing for the project in cProjects and save it.

Result

The costing result with costs and revenues is displayed in cProjects. The quotation is available for further processing.

Example

The following graphic shows an example in which individual phases were assigned to the values Consulting and Course with the field Grouping. The materials that form the items in the quotation are selected through the DIP profile. In the initial quotation, the course is to be invoiced using resource-related billing. The customer does not accept the quotation. A new quotation is therefore prepared in which the course has a fixed price. The customer accepts this new quotation. The items of the second quotation are added to the contract.

Cost controlling in this example is based on manually created multilevel controlling. The billing elements were created such that they correspond to the groupings. A WBS element was created for each phase. For the Realization phase, detailed cost controlling at task level is to be performed. For this reason, additional WBS elements were created for the tasks Configuration and Test.