Explaining Key Project Attributes

You ask a more experienced colleague about the necessity and meaning of entering additional attributes when maintaining the project master data, such as the profit center, responsible person, settlement rule, statistical/revenues for information, and budget profile.

When creating a project in the master data app, you need to maintain multiple attributes, including organizational assignments.

As discussed, the project name, description, and project profile are needed.

The time frame defines the limit in time for the use of this project.

A responsible cost center needs to be entered. In case the project is set to statistical it would be the one used for real posting. It can also be the reference for a future settlement.

Some automatic derivations are performed: Projects, based on their mandatory responsible cost center, benefit from an automatic derivation of the corresponding controlling area and project currency. Then a company code can also be derived for the project from the responsible cost center.

The profit center is requested as well to allow automatic transfer values posted on projects to it. All actual postings to the overhead project are then passed along automatically to the profit center. Plan values also may be transferred to profit center planning if required. You will then be able to conduct an analysis of all costs at a profit center level.

On the Control tab, you will use the costing sheet that can have control on the calculation of an actual overhead if you want to run that kind of calculation during the period end closing.

If you want to monitor the budget consumption, the budget availability control settings can also be activated. When reaching a defined limit, a warning or an error message would be displayed. This depends on the settings that are defined in the budget availability profile. These two last topics will be explained later, as it is considered an advanced topic.

Finally, on the blocked functions tab, it is possible to block certain type of postings for your project or WBS element such as time recording, Concur expense posting, manual activity allocation, and others.