Explaining the Process Steps for Customer Project Management

Learn how to efficiently manage customer projects in SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Define process steps, create projects, assign roles, manage billing, review project health, and close projects.

You can use the app Create Customer Project to create customer projects.

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 0rganization. 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. Customer-specific role types can be defined via the SSCUI 103448Define Role Types.

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.

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).

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 or via the Manage Prices – Sales application using Condition Type PCP0.
  • 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, which 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.

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.

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. 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.

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:

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_ENGMNTPR0JTMEEXPNBILLGQ CDS query view.
  Note

  You must be assigned the Employee (SAP_BR_EMPL0YEE) role.

1. Open the Query Browser app.
2. Select the checkbox corresponding to the C_ENGMNTPR0JTMEEXPNBILLGQ 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 also extend the Billing area of the app in the Custom Fields and Logie app using the following business contexts:

• Sales: Sales Document
• Sales: Sales Document Item

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

You can implement logic for the following enhancement options:

The following video shows how to crate a project.

The following video gives information about Project Cost Planning.

The following video gives information about Cost Rate Maintenance.

The following video gives information about Revenue Rate Maintenance.

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.

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 = (Actual Cost / Planned Cost at Actual Rate (EAC)) * 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.

budget, staffing, and execution. You can also record the trend for each of these parameters.

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.

The following video gives information about Project Billing Setup T&E.

The following video gives information about Project Billing Setup FF.

The following video gives information about Project Billing Setup Periodic Service.

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 Cheek 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