Creating Claims for Projects

James is a project planner at Hybrid Machinery. Thomas is the IT manager. The customer complained that the plans were carried out wrong and that the power cable should follow a different layout. Thomas and James evaluate the situation.

While your project is being executed, you may experience delivery problems, price variations, unforeseeable bottlenecks, and so on, which result in variances from the project plan. If this occurs, you must document these variances and clarify which contractual partners are responsible. Claim management ensures that a claim arising from variances is prepared and lodged against the contractual partners at the right time.

You can use the CLAIM notification category in the SAP Project System (PS) to create claims and perform the following claim processes:

1. Document any variances from your project plan.
2. Identify the party responsible.
3. Initiate follow-up activities.

Variances often incur increased costs. You can enter the costs that may have been incurred either when creating the claim or at a later stage (for example, when more detailed information about the claim becomes available). You can create claims either in SAP PS or via the internet. In the SAP PS, the claim overview and claim hierarchy provide reports that you can use to evaluate claims.

You can integrate the data for estimated variance costs from claims in cost planning for the relevant projects. The system automatically creates an internal order as a cost collector when you save the claim. Then, the system transfers the estimated costs to the cost collector. The internal order is automatically assigned to the same work breakdown structure (WBS) element as the claim, and can be evaluated in the appropriate SAP PS reports.