Exploring SAP Fiori apps for Customer Project Management (J11)

The Customer Project Management (J11) scope item has the following main SAP Fiori apps:

• Import Employees
• Create Customer Projects
• Plan Customer Projects
• Project Staffing Analysis
• Manage Project Billing
• Review Customer Projects
• Close Projects
• Project Control – Professional Services Projects

Note

With SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108, the Release Billing Proposals, Release Billing Requests, Edit Billing Request, and Schedule Release of Billing Proposals apps have been deprecated. A new billing solution for customer projects is now available with the Project Systems - Project Billing (SAP_PS_BC_PROJ_BLNG_PC) business catalog.

It is recommended that you use the new billing solution for all new customer projects. You can do this by setting the value of the Use Project Billing (New) field to Yes. To process billing documents for your projects that use the new billing solution, use the Manage Project Billing app. This app is available with the Project Systems - Project Billing (SAP_PS_BC_PROJ_BLNG_PC) business catalog.

The apps Release Billing Proposals, Release Billing Requests, Edit Billing Request, and Schedule Release of Billing Proposals are available for existing business users and can be used to process billing documents of existing projects but will be deleted in the future releases.

With this app you can create new or update existing personal details, employment, and service cost level data for an employee. You can download templates based on the selected Delimiter and Import Type. Currently, the app only supports the comma (,) and semicolon (;) as delimiters (list separators). The app provides the following key features:

• Employee and employment data
  • Upload of new employee data including the simultaneous upload of multiple employee data.
  • Update of an existing employee or employment data.
• Service cost level

  Assignment of service cost level to existing employees.

• Basic employee import
  • Upload of basic employee information.
  • Contains only one template with all the employee and mandatory employment fields, which is suitable for most cases where time-dependent employment data is not required when creating a basic user.
    Note

    You cannot use the Basic Employee Import for termination and rehiring of employment for employees. Multiple records with different values for data using time dependency are not allowed in this template.
• Employee skill tag import

  Upload existing employee skill tags, which supports the append and overwrite options, enabling you to either append the given tags to the already available tags, or discard the old tags and overwrite with the new tags.

You can use this app to complete the following steps:

1. Download the Comma Separated Values (CSV) templates and complete them offline using Microsoft Excel or any tool of your choice. Save the files as .CSV with UTF-8 encoding.
   Note

   If you are using Microsoft Excel, it is recommended to use a delimiter as per your regional settings.
2. Import the CSV files. This will trigger an asynchronous import, with an indication of the approximate processing time.
3. Employee data is created and business partner synchronization and user creation is triggered (if authorized).
   Note

   If the business partner synchronization fails, you can manually trigger the synchronization using the Trigger Data Synchronization app.
4. Check the employee import log after a certain duration for any errors using the Monitor Employee Imports app.
   Note

   Check if the employee is visible in the employee search and then check the employee details using the Employee app.

Note

• Users are only created if you have the authorization to create users. Otherwise, employees are created without business users. Users must then be created using the Maintain Business Users app.
• You cannot delete employee/employment/user data using this app.
• Currently, only single employment is supported, however data is time-dependent, and multiple splits can be created for data, like cost center, employment status, and so on.
• To use this app for creating employees, ensure that the ID of company code, personnel area, and personnel subarea are maintained in the same configuration. For example, when creating these entities through the Manage Your Solution self-service UI, all three IDs should be maintained in sync. Any creation or change of the company code ID requires the creation or change of personnel area and subarea with the same IDs.

• Select the delimiter (list separator) according to your regional preferences and download the templates based on the list separator.

  For example, the default list separator in the German local setting is the semicolon. In this case, select the semicolon as delimiter and then download the templates.

  Note

  Currently, only these two delimiters are supported. If your regional setting uses a completely different delimiter, you can use spreadsheet functions to split the data and edit the files in a text editor at a later stage to replace the delimiter with commas.
• Use UTF-8 format.
  Note

  Make sure that you use this format in the text editors when saving the file.
• Enter decimals in . (DOT) and not , (comma) format.
• Enter dates in YYYYMMDD format.
• Mandatory fields are marked with an asterisk (*) at the beginning of column header.
• Enter all IDs in UPPERCASE, for example, PersonExternalID, UserAlias).
• Column headers also include the possible values for codes in (), for example, WorkAgreementStatus (0,1).
• If any value starts with a leading 0 (zero), change the cell format to text and then enter the values.

  For example: Company Code (CHAR4) value is 0001. If you enter 000, 1 by default, the spreadsheet application considers it as 1. To consider all the preceding zeros, change the cell format to text and enter 0001

Note

• Do not change the order of the columns (fields) in the template while uploading.
• You have implemented SAP S/4HANA Cloud and created employees using the Import Employees app. At a later stage, you activate SAP SuccessFactors, then ensure that the PersonExternalID is uploaded using the Import Employees app and the Person ID External that is entered in the SAP SuccessFactors system is the same.

Note

Employee data is considered as time-independent data when imported through CSV.

Field Name	Description	Constant Values or Format
*PersonExternalID	Indicates external ID of employee	UPPERCASE only (maximum 20 characters)
UserName	User name used for login. This field is optional and is mapped to User Alias in transaction SU01. Complete the field to create a back-end user. If the field is filled, then authorizations are checked if user creation is allowed. If user creation authorizations are not available, then only the employee is created and an error message is written in the Import Log.	UPPERCASE only (maximum 40 characters)
*BusinessPartnerRole		BUP003- Employee BBP005 - ServicePerformer BBP010 - Freelancer
Supplier	Mandatory field for the Service Performer role (BBP005)
*FirstName	First name of the employee	Maximum 40 characters
*LastName	Last name of the employee	Maximum 40 characters
PersonFullName	Including any form of address (for example, Mr. John H. Schmidt). If you use the format FamilyName, GivenName make sure that EmployeeFullName is included in double quotes (as per standard CSV guideline) for example, Schmidt, John. Note If you edit using a spreadsheet application, the form of address is automatically included	Maximum 80 characters
GenderCode	By default, an empty GenderCode is considered as Unknown	1 – Male 2 – Female
EmailAddress	Business E-mail Address
PhoneNumber	Business Phone Number	Change the columns (PhoneNumber and MobilePhoneNumber) to the text format before entering the numbers. Include country code and area code. No checks on format. Stored as complete string
MobilePhoneNumber	Business Mobile Phone Number	See PhoneNumber
Language	The correspondence language of the employee	Example: DE, EN
BankCountry	Identifies the country in which the bank is located	Example: Germany’s bank country key is DE
Bank	Specifies the bank key under which bank data from the respective country is stored
SWIFTCode	An international bank code that identifies particular banks worldwide
BankAccount	A number under which the account is managed at the bank	This field is ignored if the IBAN is filled (Bank Account Number is retrieved from the IBAN)
IBAN	Standardized uniform ID number representing bank account details, in accordance with the European Committee for Banking Standards (ECBS). An International Bank Account (IBAN) contains a maximum of 34 alphanumeric characters and is composed of a combination of the following elements: country key of the bank (ISO code), two check digits and country-specific account number. Note Example: In Germany, this consists of the bank code and the account number. In France, this field comprises of the bank code, the account number, and the control key
PaymentMethod		T - Bank Transfer C - Check X - Cash
PaymentCurrency	Country payment currency code	Example: Germany’s PaymentCurrency is EUR
BankAccountHolderName	Name of the employee as per the bank records
BankControlKey	Check the digit for checking the combination of bank number and bank account number. Only valid for the countries Brazil, Spain, France, Italy, Mexico, and Chile
SkillTags	Name of the skill tags that are associated with the employee. If there is more than one skill, then all the skills could be entered separated by comma. In case of update scenarios, these skill tags will be appended to the existing tags eliminating duplicates	Example: Skilltag1, SkillTag2, Skilltag3

Field Name	Description	Constant Values or Format
*PersonExternalID	Indicates external ID of employee. Note Currently, only 1 employment creation is supported so there is no separate field for Employment ID	UPPERCASE only
*StartDate	Start date of employment. Use actual date of employment. Do not use dummy date 19000101. If the cost center or other attributes change, then create the relevant number of records with the appropriate validity period. Note There cannot be any gaps or overlaps in the validity period of different records	YYYYMMDD
*EndDate	End date of employment. For an unlimited contract, set the value until 99991231. In a limited contract (or termination), there must be separate record with status 1 and status 0. Set status 0 record until 9991231. Note There cannot be any gaps or overlaps in the validity period of different records	YYYYMMDD
*WorkAgreementStatus	Set to 1 for unlimited contract. Use 0 if employment is not active or terminated. Note The first employment record cannot be inactive (0)	0 – Inactive 1 – Active
*CompanyCode	Include leading zeros in the company code. Use the 'Text' column formatting when editing in a spreadsheet application. Note Once specified, the Company Code cannot be changed or cannot be changed for various time periods
CostCenter	Cost center that exists in system and valid as of StartDate. Check the controlling area setting in your system
WorkingTimePercentage / WeeklyWorkingHours / WeeklyWorkDays	Fill all of these fields as a group, or leave them blank. You cannot fill just one of them	EmploymentPercent and WeeklyWorkingHours are represented as whole numbers and not decimals for business-related reasons. Note Use dot(.) to represent a decimal point when entering decimals
ServiceCostLevel	Specify service cost level of employment. Check valid service cost levels are configured
ManagerPersonExternalID	Supervisor (Manager) for the uploading employee	Employee ID of the Manager

This CSV file can be used where employees are uploaded using a spreadsheet application, or if they are transferred through SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central (EC) Integration. Service Cost Level is not mapped to any field in EC, which means that local editing is always required using Employee factsheet, or a CSV upload is required in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud system.

Field Name	Description	Constant Values or Format
*PersonExternalID	Indicates external ID of employee	UPPERCASE only
PersonWorkAgreementExternalID	Enter the UserSysID field value here. In case of single employment, this value typically has the same value as PERSON_ID_EXTERNAL. If this field is not entered, the same service cost level is applied to all employment. Note Use this field only when Integration with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central (SAP SFEC) is active and employee or employment is replicated via SAP SFEC
CompanyCode	Enter CompanyCode to identify which internal employment this service cost level is related
*StartDate	Date from which this service cost level is active. Note All existing records in the future are overwritten	YYYYMMDD
ServiceCostLevel	Specify service cost level of employment. Check valid service cost levels configured

You can use this CSV file to upload the basic information of the employee. In this new template, additional fields are added to the employee template (Employment Details - Company Code, Cost Center, Start Date, End Date).

Note

You cannot terminate or rehire employees using this import.

Field Name	Description	Constant Values or Format
*PersonExternalID	Indicates the external ID of employee	UPPERCASE only (maximum 20 characters)
UserAlias	User name used for login. This field is optional. When the field is filled, a business user is created. The alias of this business user would be filled in the field. User is created only if user creation authorizations are available to the logged in user. If user creation authorizations are not available, then only the employee is created. The user would not be created and an error message is written in Import Log stating this information	UPPERCASE only (maximum 40 characters)
*BusinessPartnerRole		BUP003- Employee BBP005 - ServicePerformer BBP010 - Freelancer
Supplier	Mandatory field for the Service Performer role (BBP005)
*FirstName	First name of the employee	Maximum 40 characters
*LastName	Last name of the employee	Maximum 40 characters
PersonFullName	Including any form of address (Example: Mr. John H. Schmidt). If you use the format FamilyName, GivenName make sure EmployeeFullName is included in double quotes, as per standard CSV guidelines (Example: Schmidt, John). Note If you edit using a spreadsheet application, this happens automatically	Maximum 80 characters
GenderCode	If the GenderCode is empty by default, it will consider the gender as unknown	1 – Male 2 – Female
EmailAddress	Business e-mail address
PhoneNumber	Business phone number	Include country code and area code. No checks on format. Stored as a complete string. Note Change the columns (PhoneNumber and MobilePhoneNumber) to the text format before entering the numbers
MobilePhoneNumber	Business mobile phone number	See PhoneNumber
Language	The correspondence language of the employee	Example: DE, EN
*CompanyCode	Include leading zeroes in company code. Use the 'Text' column formatting when editing in spreadsheet application. Note Once specified, Company Code cannot be changed or cannot be changed for various time periods
CostCenter	Cost center that exists in the system and is valid as of StartDate. Check the controlling area settings in your system
*StartDate	Start date of employment. Use the actual date of employment. Do not use dummy date 19000101. If the cost center or other attributes change, then create the relevant number of records with the appropriate validity period. Note There cannot be any gaps or overlaps in the validity period of different records	YYYYMMDD
*EndDate	End date of employment. Set to 99991231 for an unlimited contract. Note There cannot be any gaps or overlaps in the validity period of different records. Note In a limited contract, (or termination), there must be separate record with status 1 and status 0. Set status 0 record until 9991231	YYYYMMDD

This import type is used where employees are uploaded using a spreadsheet application, or if they are transferred through the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central (EC) Integration. The Skill tag is not mapped to any field in EC, which means that local editing is always required using an Employee factsheet, or a CSV upload is required in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud system.

You can use this app to create customer projects.

Note

You can only create projects for the service organizations for which you are authorized.

The key capabilities of the Create Customer Projects app are as follows:

• Creation of a customer project with information such as the service organization, cost center, profit center, customer, project manager, currency, and dates. The default currency is derived from the customer currency for the sales area of the selected service organization. However, you can change the default currency to one that you prefer.

  By default, the system displays the service organization of the project manager creating the project.

• Validation of a Customer’s Sales Area. When you create a customer project, the system displays only customer records where the sales area of the customer is the same as the Sales Area assigned to the Service Organization. Similarly, the system also prevents the editing of existing customer projects if the sales areas of the customer record and the service organization are not the same. To overcome this situation, it is necessary to update the customer master with the Sales Area of the corresponding service organization.
• Validation of a Service Organization's Attributes. When you create a customer project or an internal project, the Service Organization field displays only service organizations that are defined as a sales organization. Similarly, when you create or update resource plans in work packages, the Delivery Organization field displays only service organizations that are defined as a delivery organization. To view the attributes of a service organization, use the Maintain Service Organizations app.

You can assign people to additional project roles, such as, project partner, project accountant, and project controller. Users assigned to these project roles can view and edit project plans.

You can decide whether the project can be searched for and viewed by other project managers or only by the responsible project manager. To restrict access to the project by persons other than the responsible project manager and stakeholders, set the Public Project switch to No.

As of SAP S/4HANA Cloud release 2111, the default billing process is the Project Billing: the Use Project Billing (New) switch is defaulted to Yes.

After entering the required information, you can choose either of the following options:

• Save to create the project.

• Save and Proceed to create the project and continue to plan other aspects of the project, such as, work packages, work items, roles, resources, expenses, and attachments.

Key users can extend the app using the Custom Fields and Logic app and the Engagement Project business context.

You have the following options:

• Add additional fields to forms and tables
• Change the order of fields
• Regroup and rename fields
• Save the current layout
• Make settings to exclude fields

Note

UI adaptation of this app is a one-time activity and is specific to this app. You must repeat this activity to view UI adaptations when you view a project or edit a project.

You can add fields to the following UI elements:

You can implement logic for the following enhancement options:

You can use this app to manage customer projects for which you are the responsible project manager. This app allows you to search for projects, copy existing projects, and edit your projects to plan work packages, efforts, resources, and billing, recalculate cost and revenue, and analyze financial key performance indicators (KPIs).

Note

Your ability to display or change projects depends on the service organizations for which you are authorized, and whether a project is public or private.

The key features of the Plan Customer Projects (F0719) app allow you to:

• View a list of projects for which you are the responsible project manager or assigned to one of the additional project roles.
• Manage your list of favorite projects.
• Filter the list of displayed projects.
• Search for other public projects.
• Analyze the financial performance of projects for which you are responsible.
• Create new customer projects.
• Manage the project lifecycle using the following stages:
  • In Planning: You can plan work packages, work items, resources, and expenses. You can also delete a project.
  • Contract Preparation: You can review your project plan and create work packages and billing plans. You can also maintain project-specific prices in the Billing area.
  • In Execution: You can confirm the staffing of assigned resources and allow staffed resources to record their effort towards the project. When you set a project to this stage, the system automatically creates a baseline version of the project plan.
  • Completed: In this stage, resources can no longer record effort towards the project. However, you can process invoices, post expenses, and transfer costs to accounting.
  • Closed: This stage prevents further processing of invoices or account posting for the project. However, you can reset the stage to In Execution (to allow recording of effort and processing of effort-related cost) or to Completed (to process pending invoices).
• Update the profit center for the project, but only as long as no actual cost or revenue has been posted.
• Create a new project by copying information from an existing one. Basic information from the project header and work packages are copied, and project dates are proposed from the duration of the existing project. Hence, it is recommended that you review this information before creating the new project.
• Manage work packages and resources.
• Manage the billing of services.

Using the Plan Customer Projects (F0719) app, you can compare and update project versions.

• A baseline version is automatically created when you set the project stage to In Execution. This also enables the Versions area, w000000000000000hi.ch displays a comparison of the project plan between the baseline and current versions. The default view displays a comparison of work packages that are different from the baseline version. However, you can also switch the view to display all work packages.

  You can do the following:

  • Update the baseline version with the current plan of one or more work packages.
  • Synchronize key figures and values in the current project plan to enable financial reporting for projects.

• When you use the Update Baseline or Sync with Finance buttons, a copy of the information is also transferred to finance to enable management reporting for different entities, based on actual and plan data for projects. Hence it is recommended to periodically update and synchronize the relevant versions.

  Note

  The planned revenue in the baseline for management reporting is based on time and expense billing even for work packages assigned to a fixed price contract.

Work packages help you manage the scope and delivery of services in projects. You can create the following types of work packages in a customer project:

• Time-based, where the services are measured in units of time. For example, hourly services of a consultant. In these work packages, planned cost and revenue are calculated for the effort.

• Unit-based, where the services are measured in units other than time. For example, when you plan to deliver a certain number of automation scripts or reports. The following applies to unit-based work packages:

  • The unit is always considered billable, and revenue is calculated only planned quantities of the unit.
  • The efforts are always considered non-billable, and only cost is calculated for the planned effort.

• You use work packages to plan and schedule high-level project activities, such as:

  • Work package dates and work items.
  • Required project roles and effort, the organization from which you want to staff a role, and whether the role is billable or not. If required, you can also specify up to five skills for each role. However, these skills are for information only and not directly used to search for resources.

  • Expenses.

• For each role, you can search for resources and view details, such as the following:

  • Contact details of an employee, work location, skills, and experience in previous projects.
  • Employee availability for the duration of the work package.
  • Employees whose employment ends before the end date of the work package.
  • Employee availability per month (in hours or days), for the calendar year.
    Note

    Availability is calculated based on the working hours per week, defined in the business partner's master data and staffing in other projects. If resource management has been activated, the availability is based on the daily working hours maintained for the business partner.

  • You can view and manually redistribute effort across the periods of the work package.

    Note

    If you change the dates (month) of a work package, the project dates are also adjusted. Besides, you must also choose how the system redistributes planned efforts. The following options are available:

    • Retain Total Efforts: The system redistributes equally, the total planned effort for the roles or resources in the work package.
    • Retain Efforts for Common Periods: The system retains only the efforts in periods that are common between the old and new work package dates and distributes the efforts equally between the new periods of the work package.

• You can assign resources to project roles, based on the relevance of their skills and their availability. You can also use work items to assign responsibilities to assigned resources.

• You can confirm the staffing of resources when the project stage is set to In Execution. This confirmation results in staffing the resource as per their availability for the work package.

  Note

  If resource management has been activated, then assignments made by a resource manager are stored as staffing confirmations.

• You can manage documents for work packages.

• You can delete a work package, but only if there are no actual time or expense postings.

The planned cost is calculated using the standard price for the role or the staffed resource, as follows:

• If a delivery organization is not specified, the cost is derived from the cost center of the project.
• If a delivery organization is specified, the cost is derived from the default cost center of the delivery organization.
  Note

  If the resource management solution has been activated, the costs are calculated as follows:

  • If you've planned for a role or requested a resource, the cost rate of the role is used.
  • If the staffed effort for a role is equal to the planned effort, then the cost rate is determined from the specific attributes of the staffed resource. If multiple resources are staffed to a role, the planned cost is a sum of the cost rates determined for each resource.
  • If the staffed effort for a role is more than the planned effort, then the planned cost is calculated only for the planned effort using the cost determined from the staffed resources.
  • If the staffed effort for a role is less than the planned effort, then the planned cost is a sum of the cost rate for the staffed effort (determined from the staffed resource) and the cost rate of the role for the remaining planned effort.

You can maintain project-specific prices to manage revenue and margin.

Note

• The service price list uses only prices per hour.
• If you create master data to be used in the service price list with the Set Service Prices - Sales app, do not use different time units, such as, eight hours, one day, and so on.

On the Service Price List screen, you can perform the following tasks:

• Display standard prices

  You can view standard prices that are default prices for services in a customer project. If the validity period of a standard price overlaps with the validity period of the project, the system displays the standard price. You can limit the display of standard prices to the ones whose validity periods include the current date.

• Display and edit project-specific prices

  • You can override the standard price by defining a project-specific price, if you have the business role project manager or order management specialist. Otherwise, you can only display project-specific prices.

  • When you create a project-specific price, the currency is copied from the project currency.

    Note

    The currency for the standard prices can be different from the project currency. If you adapt the project validity, then the validity of the project-specific prices is adapted accordingly.
    Note

    When you delete a project-specific price that is valid today, the end of the validity period is set to yesterday. If you choose to show all standard prices, the deleted project-specific price is still displayed, but you cannot edit it anymore. The validity period displayed always refers to the standard price.

As a project manager, you can plan for roles by requesting specific resources using the link in the Requested Resource column. Such requests are directed to a resource manager who can subsequently make staffing assignments. Alternatively, the project manager can use the link in the Staffed Resources column to search for resources and confirm their assignment to the project. However, no changes are allowed once a staffing assignment has been made.

In the billing area, you can display and edit the billing information for your project. To access this area, set your project to the Contract Preparation stage.

• Create billing items

  When you create and save at least one billing item, the system creates a sales order. Every billing item in the billing area corresponds to a sales order item in the sales order. You can open this sales order directly from the billing area to change it.

  Note

  You can only access the sales order when you are in display mode. If you cannot access the sales order, check your authorizations.

• Delete billing items

  Note

  If you want to delete a billing item of an existing project, first delete all of the billing item’s work package assignments. You can only remove a work package if no costs have been booked for it. Also note that you cannot delete the last remaining billing item.

• Enter a customer reference

  The alphanumeric key creates the link between the customer reference, such as, a purchase order, and the sales document that you create. During correspondence with a customer, you can use this key to find specific information about the document. The customer reference is saved in the sales order.

• Enter a customer reference date

• Open and change the service price list

For each billing item that you create, do the following steps:

• Select a contract type (fixed price, time and expenses, or periodic service)
  • Each contract type comes with a default material ID and description. In case a customer-material info record exists, the description from this record is displayed instead of the standard description.
  • How to Change an Existing Contract Type:
    • If you want to change a contract type, the system checks if the existing material is still valid for the new contract type. If the material is not valid for the new contract type, you can't change the contract type. To change the contract type, first remove the material. You can then use the value help to select a valid material.
    • Example 1: Billing item 1 uses the time and expenses contract type. The system proposes the P002 default material (project-based service: time and expenses). You want to use another contract type, so you change it to fixed price. This change is possible because P002 is a valid material for this contract type.
    • Example 2: Billing item 2 has the fixed price contract type. The system proposes the default material P001 (project-based service: fixed price). You must use another contract type. When you try to change it to time and expenses, you get an error message, and the system resets the contract type to fixed price. Material P001 is not a valid material for the time and expenses contract type. You remove the material and are then able to change the contract type to time and expenses. Using the value help, you select the P002 valid material (project-based service: time and expenses).
      Note

      If you change the contract type of an existing billing item and have already defined a billing plan for this billing item, this billing plan is deleted.

• Check the default material and material description

  • If the default material or its description is not correct for your purposes, you can change them. Any changes to the material and the material description are saved in the sales order.
    Note

    Not all materials can be entered for all contract types. Use the value help to determine which material can be used for your chosen contract type.

  • How to change an existing material:

    • Example 1: Billing item 1 uses the time and expenses contract type. The system proposes the P002 default material (project-based service: time and expenses). You want to use another material, so you manually change it to T002 (senior consultant). This change is possible because T002 is a valid material for this contract type.

    • Example 2: Billing item 2 uses the time and expenses contract type. The system proposes the P002 default material (project-based service: time and expenses). You want to use another material and manually change it to P001 (project-based service: fixed price). When you try to save your changes, you get an error message. Material P001 is not a valid material for the time and expenses contract type. Using the value help, you select the T002 valid material (senior consultant) instead.

      Note

      If you want to use a material that does not exist in the system yet, you can create this material in the Product Master app. If you cannot access the app, please check your authorizations. In the distribution chain details, select the correct item category group: PSFP for fixed price contracts, PSTE for time and expense contracts, or PSPS for periodic service contracts. Otherwise, you cannot use this material for customer projects.

• Assign work packages

  The system assigns all work packages to the first billing item that you create. If your project contains more than one billing item, reassign work packages so that every billing item has at least one work package.

  Note

  You cannot remove work packages that are already assigned to billing items once subsequent documents exist (for example, debit memo requests). However, you can still add unassigned work packages to these billing items. Also note that you can assign a work package to only one billing item, but you can assign several work packages to the same billing item.

• Check the profit center

  • For every billing item that you create, the system uses the profit center that is set for the project. As long as the project is in status In Execution or Contract Preparation, you can change the profit center for a billing item.
  • You can only choose profit centers that are valid and correspond to the duration that is defined for the project (that is, their validity starts before or on the project start date and ends on or after the project end date).

  • If you extend your project's duration, all existing billing items keep their profit centers regardless of the profit centers' validity. However, keep in mind that if you edit an existing billing item and replace an expired profit center with a valid one, you cannot change it back to the expired profit center later.

    Note

    Note the following dependencies:

    • When you change the profit center for the entire project, this new profit center is used for all new billing items. However, the profit center you have assigned to existing billing items does not change.
    • Once subsequent documents (for example, debit memo requests) or postings exist, you cannot change the profit center for related billing items anymore.
    • Every profit center is assigned to a WBS element. When you reassign a work package to a billing item with a different profit center, the profit center for the work package is adapted.

• Enter the amount to be billed

• Enter an amount cap

  You can define an upper limit for the amount to be billed for each billing item.

• Enter a cap notification threshold

• Enter the standalone selling price

  If a contract contains a material that is relevant for revenue accounting according to IFRS, you need to specify the standalone selling price (SSP). For all other materials, you cannot edit this field. The SSP is the price at which a service would be sold separately to a customer.

In the list of billing items, you can also see additional information: the planned revenue, the billing item status (including, if relevant, the reason for the rejection of a billing item), and the WBS element. You can hide displayed columns and show columns that are currently hidden. These settings are saved to your user account.

Note

If you have added a role to one or more work packages and defined it as non-billable, you can display this information in the corresponding column.

To reject a billing item or change other details in the sales order that you cannot edit in the billing area, navigate to the sales order.

A billing plan is a schedule of billing data for a single item in a sales document. It contains one or more billing plan items with billing due dates. The billing plan determines when a specific amount is billed.

In the billing plan, you can do the following tasks:

• Enter billing instructions that are for internal use only.

• Enter or change billing due dates.

  You can only change billing due dates while the billing plan item’s status is open. When a debit memo request is created for a billing item, this status changes to show that billing was requested. When an invoice is created as a subsequent document for the debit memo request, the status changes to invoiced. In both cases, you can no longer change the billing due date.

• View the processing status of the billing item (for example, open or invoiced).

  Where a billing item has been rejected, the billing plan item is also rejected.

• Add, change, or remove billing plan items (depending on their status).

• Copy billing plan items (depending on their status).

  If you want to bill certain billing items at recurrent intervals, for example, every month for one year, you can select and copy an existing billing plan item. Depending on the billing pattern you define, the system creates one or more new billing plan items, and the billing item is billed according to these billing due dates. The following dependent data is copied:

  Contract Type	Item Usage	Data That Is Copied
  Fixed price		Note Amount
  Time and expenses	Time and expenses Payment on account Down payment request	-
  Periodic service	Periodic service Usage-based billing	Amount Service start date Service end date

  Note

  You can create a maximum of 100 billing plan items.

• Depending on the contract type, you must also provide the following details:

  Contract Type	Details
  Fixed price	Note (optional) Amount
  Time and expenses	Item usage: Time and expenses (OR) Payment on account (OR) Down payment request Amount
  Periodic service	Item usage: Periodic Service Amount Service start date Service end date (OR) Usage-based billing

  Note

  If you create a new billing plan item without a billing due date, your changes are lost once you navigate back to the billing item overview.

When you plan customer projects and define billing items based on time and expense contracts, you can define a cap on the amount and set a threshold for necessary follow-up actions. However, when projects are underway and timesheet entries are posted, it is important for project managers to monitor billable revenues against amount caps to avoid negative outcomes, such as, incorrect billing or disputes.

You can perform the following tasks:

• View customer projects, relevant time and expense billing items, and the cap notification threshold. Note that a billing item can consist of one or more work packages.

• View the following measures:

  • Net Amount Cap – indicates the upper limit for the amount to be billed.
  • Cap Consumption – indicates the total value of billable effort posted against work packages assigned to a billing item.
  • Cap Consumption % – indicates the percentage of cap consumption with reference to the net cap amount.

  • Cost PoC – indicates the percentage of completion based on actual billable effort from timesheet postings and the total planned cost of relevant work packages.

• This app uses the C_ENGMNTPROJTMEEXPNBILLGQ CDS query view.

  Note

  You must be assigned the Employee (SAP_BR_EMPLOYEE) role.

1. Open the Query Browser app.
2. Select the checkbox corresponding to the C_ENGMNTPROJTMEEXPNBILLGQ analytical query, and choose the Open for Analysis button.
3. On the filter bar, choose Filters.
4. Enter your project IDs in the Customer Project field or use the input help to select specific projects.
5. Choose Go.
6. On the filter bar, choose Actions → Save as Tile...
7. Enter a name for the tile and choose a group in which to save the tile.
8. Choose OK.

Key users can extend the app in the Custom Fields and Logic app using the following business contexts:

• Customer Project

• Work Package

You have the following options:

• Add additional fields to forms and tables
• Change the order of fields
• Regroup and rename fields
• Save the current layout
• Make settings to exclude fields

Key users can also extend the Billing area of the app in the Custom Fields and Logic app using the following business contexts:

• Sales: Sales Document

• Sales: Sales Document Item

Note

When you adapt the UI to display your custom fields, you have to do this once in the display mode and once in the edit mode.

You can add fields to the following UI elements using UI adaptation at runtime:

You can implement logic for the following enhancement options:

With this app, project managers can view and analyze the staffing situations in projects for which they are responsible. You can view information about resource requests, whether staffing has been fulfilled, the resources assigned to a request, the distribution of planned and staffed effort across months, and the cost.

The key features of the Project Staffing Analysis (F2902) include:

• Using filters to search for resource requests.
• Personalizing the display of information by creating your own views. By default, the list displays resource requests only from projects for which you are responsible, or assigned as the project partner, project controller, or project accountant. However, you may use the Project or the Work Package filters to view resource requests from other projects.
• Viewing resource requests and the status of staffing.
• Viewing whether resource requests have been fulfilled, are overdue, or due in the future.
• Viewing the progress of staffing per resource request.
• Displaying an overview of the project, especially information such as:
  • The total planned cost for the project, and a comparison between the planned cost of resources and the cost after staffing.
  • The overall progress of staffing within the project.
• Displaying detailed information for a resource request, such as, the duration, requested skills, planned and staffed hours, resources staffed to a request, the delivery organization of resources, and the cost per resource. You can also view how the staffed effort is distributed across months.

You can use this app to perform a monthly review of customer projects for percentage of completion (PoC) and to adjust the estimate to complete (ETC). This app also provides an overview of various KPIs, displayed up to the forecast month for the current month.

Note

This app only displays projects that are in the In Execution stage.

The key features of the Review Customer Projects app include:

• Displaying a list of projects that you are responsible for as a project manager. You can also use filters to control the list of displayed projects.
• Viewing information, such as, the PoC, cost deviation, effort deviation, actual margin, and the overall status of the project.
• Carrying out monthly reviews of projects by setting the forecast month. When you review a project, the system fetches actual postings only until the forecast month.
• Navigating to view project-level KPIs and details of the project plan and actuals.

The system always sets the current month as the forecast month when you review a project for the first time. Subsequently, a new forecast month can be set only if the previous forecast is completed and the calendar month has changed.

In the Forecast area, you can do the following tasks:

• View project-level KPIs, such as, PoC, margin at completion, margin (sold), and deviations. If the forecast month and the current month are different, then the app displays two views with information up to the corresponding months. Detailed plan information is displayed and project-level KPIs are calculated based on the active view (Forecast Month or Till This Month).
• View the list of work packages, the planned roles and expenses, the corresponding planned and actual numbers, ETC, the resulting EAC cost, and the PoC for each item.

Note

Planned roles with similar attributes are grouped into a single row. Values in Cost (Forecast) and Effort (Forecast) are based on the sum of individual plan items in the corresponding row. Work packages without a planned role or expense are not displayed for review.

• View information about actual time postings for an item, by choosing the Actual link.
• View the trend of project EAC across all forecast months, either as a chart or a table.
• Update the estimate at completion, if necessary. This is possible only in the view for the forecast month. If the actual effort or expense exceeds the plan, the ETC value is set to 0 (zero).
• Use the Recalculate button to simulate the effect of ETC adjustments on individual plan items and overall project KPIs.
  • For time-based work packages, the following steps are applied:
    1. The system determines the average cost rate based on the total planned cost for each row.
    2. The system calculates the variance (between planned and actual values) that must be adjusted into the plan of the current and future months of the respective work packages.
    3. The system equally distributes only the variance from previous months, into the current and future months of respective work packages.
    4. The system calculates the ETC cost as a product of the average plan cost rate and ETC cost.
    5. The system calculates the estimated cost at completion (EAC) as the sum of actual cost and ETC cost.
  • For unit-based work packages, the following steps are applied:
    1. The system calculates an EAC cost for the unit, using actual effort in proportion to the actual and planned units. The formula for this calculation is (Actual Cost / Actual Units) * Planned Units.
    2. The system calculates the POC as (Actual Cost / Actual Units) * 100.
  • The KPIs in the header section of the app are refreshed to display newly calculated PoC, margins, and deviations. The system also indicates values where the EAC is affected positively or negatively.
• Save the changes to the project. This also results in a recalculation in the background.

Note

The adjusted EAC value is not considered when you use the Customer Projects app to monitor a project.

In the Status area, you can do the following tasks:

• Create a new entry to record the current status of the project, for parameters such as budget, staffing, and execution. You can also record the trend for each of these parameters.
• Set the overall status of the project.
• View a historical record of statuses and trends set for the project.

In the Versions area, you can view a comparative table that displays values for work packages across the baseline, the current plan, and the EAC.

As a project manager, you can use the Close Projects application job template to close customer projects that are complete. You need Project Manager - Professional Services (SAP_BR_PROJECT_MANAGER_PROF) to launch the Close Projects app. Before closing relevant customer projects, the application job checks whether follow-on business documents and processes are complete, and records the results in an application log.

The application job does the following:

• Checks whether follow-on documents and business processes related to a project are complete.
• If the checks are successful, then the application job sets the project's stage to Closed, and records the result in the application log.
• If the follow-on documents or business processes are incomplete, the application job does not process such projects but records the results in the application log.

You can schedule application jobs for a combination of the following parameters:

• Service Organization: Shows only the service organizations that you are authorized for.
• Project Manager: Shows only the projects for which you have the project manager authorization.
• Project ID: shows only the projects that you are authorized for.

While scheduling a new application job, the following authorizations are checked when you choose the Check or the Schedule button:

• Company Code: Checks your access to edit projects that belong to a company code.
• Cost Center: Checks your access to edit projects that belong to a cost center.
• Profit Center: Checks your access to edit projects that belong to a profit center.
• Service Organization: Checks your access to edit projects that belong to a service organization.
• Project Profile: Checks your access to edit projects of profile type C or P001 (Customer Projects).
• Confidential Project: Checks whether you have access to confidential projects (private projects) that you are not part of. The value N indicates that you do not have access to such confidential projects. Unrestricted authorization indicates that you can access all confidential projects.

This application that can be used as one common entry point for all customer and internal professional service projects.

The key features of the Project Control – Professional Services Projects app include:

• One list that shows customer as well as internal professional service projects
• Show basic project attributes in a tabular form and search based on them
• Possibility to be enhanced by customer attributes
• Navigation to professional service project related apps, including creation of projects
• Navigation to related sales order and solution order (depending on user’s authorization)
• Possibility to enhance the navigation options by help of the business catalogs assigned to users