Planning Activity Quantities and Cost Rates

In this lesson, we go over the file preparation and upload process for different types of plan data.

At the Bike Company, the departments perform three types of cost center relevant planning:

• Expense planning per cost account and cost center,
• Activity planning for each activity type and cost center combination, and
• Planning statistical key figure values.

You need to be able to support the department managers in preparing their planning files for handover. You also need to know the process for uploading the files into SAP S/4HANA for all the different types of planning.

Here are the steps to follow if you want to prepare the file to collect Expense Planning data for the Financial department:

1. Open the Import Financial Plan Data app.
2. Download the template CostCenterPlanning.csv file locally.
3. Fill in the planned data for your cost center.
4. Upload the filled-in template.

Planning activities involves the following types of plan data:

• Activity output planning, where you define which cost centers provide which activity types in which quantity in the planning periods.
• Activity input planning, where you plan the quantities of activity a cost centers will receive from another cost center.
• Activity cost rate planning, where you plan the fixed and variable prices for each activity per activity unit.

To better understand Activity Planning, let’s go over an example:

You work with the IT Services cost center manager to define the activity output planning for their cost center.

In activity output planning, you define which cost centers provide which activity types and in which quantity during the planning periods. In this scenario, the IT Services cost center plans to provide 100 Hours of IT Services per plan period.

In our example, determining the input activity lets you plan the activity quantities that other cost centers need from the IT Services department.

Here, the activity will be needed by the Back Office and two consulting departments.

These three cost centers plan to get a total of 60 hours (30 H + 20 H + 10 H) of the activity from the IT Services cost center.

In parallel, to complete the activity planning, you must maintain the planned activity cost rate in SAP S/4HANA. This is the internal cost covering price the IT Services cost center charges for an hour of service provided. This is planned at 100 EUR per hour.

The figure above gives an idea of how to set up the flat file for the upload of activity outputs:

• The quantities of the receiver cost centers (on the right in the example) are planned with partner cost centers (on the left in the example) and credit values (negative sign) from the perspective of the sender cost center.
• Quantities for which no planned receiver cost centers are known are planned without partner cost center and also with credit values (negative sign).

You use the Manage Cost Rates Plan app to download the PlanCostRateTemplate.xlsx where you maintain the planned activity cost rates. After upload, the planned cost rates are stored in the system.

Uploading statistical key figure values is done using the Import Statistical Key Figure Plan Data app. You download the CostCenterStatisticalKeyFigures.csv template, fill in the data, and then select the file to be uploaded.