In this topic, you will learn how to better understand project costing.
Steps:
Organizations are often divided into many operational areas. These areas can be referred to as departments, divisions, and cost centers. PeopleSoft, however, defines these operational areas as business units.
Step 1Project Costing business units represent a grouping of projects. For example, a Project Costing business unit can be set up to group projects for an entire corporation, country, location, or site. The business unit can also make a distinction between internal and external projects. Individual or multiple business units can also maintain entirely unique information.
Step 2Regardless of the number of business units that you implement, your organization can use a central database for consolidated financial reporting at any level in the organizational hierarchy. Reports and statements can also be generated for an individual Project Costing business unit.
Step 3PeopleSoft integrates business units in Project Costing to business units in other financial applications through integration templates. With these templates, you can specify a one-to-one, many-to-one, or one-to-many relationship between Project Costing business units and business units for other financial applications.
Step 4In a unique relationship with General Ledger as shown in the graphic, one Project Costing business unit can map to many General Ledger business units. The graphic illustrates the three types of relationships between Project Costing and General Ledger business units.
Step 5Almost all information tracked in PeopleSoft is entered using a business unit. Using multiple business units in PeopleSoft lets an organization take advantage of individualized and consolidated reporting.
Step 6Through integration with other PeopleSoft applications and/or third-party applications, Project Costing accumulates a large amount of resource transaction data. Each resource transaction contains a cost and a quantity, as well as identifiers for the cost. The value of Project Costing is that it can reflect costs in meaningful ways.
The three primary features of Project Costing are:
• Project-based billing
• Asset capitalization
• Operational analysis and reporting
Step 7Integration with other applications enables Project Costing to participate in the billing process. Project Costing enables you to import costs from PeopleSoft applications such as Purchasing, Time and Labor, and Expenses, or third-party applications. Project Costing manipulates and bills costs for specific tasks, an entire project, or a group of projects.
Step 8Integration with other applications also enables Project Costing to participate in asset capitalization. The labor and materials costs for projects can be captured and associated with specific assets.
Step 9With all of the resource transactions associated with various projects, it is essential to be able to view and analyze costs, and create reports with meaningful data. Project Costing provides great flexibility in how you can structure data to suit your business operations.
Project Costing includes procedures that enable you to view data online, and run pre-defined reports for summary information and transaction level details. In addition, you can use PeopleSoft Query to build customized reports for project information.
Step 10Project Costing stores a large amount of resource transaction data and enables you to use that data for project-based billing, asset capitalization, and operational analysis and reporting.
Step 11Each business maintains its own set of books. Therefore, there must be a set of tables defined in the database to store the information. The accounting structure for each business unit that you create is defined by a collection of tables known as a TableSet and is identified by a SetID.
Step 12TableSet and SetID is a concept that is closely related to business units. Business units maintain an independent set of books, but they can also share certain information.
For example, you are acquiring a new wire and cable business with one location in the US and another in Canada. You want to set up two new business units for the two locations. You decide to set up business units USA and CAN and SetIDs USA, CAN, and Shared.
Step 13The TableSet and SetID relationship for the new business units is displayed on the screen. To set up business units, you develop tables for UOM (Unit Of Measurement), Accounts, and Banks and define the values for certain SetIDs in the tables. You use the SetIDs in the TableSet to link the business unit USA to valid values in the tables.
Notice that both business units CAN and USA use the Share SetID for accounts because they have the same chart of accounts.
Step 14If you are implementing this system for the first time, you have to set up tables. However, if you are only adding another business unit located in the US to existing units, you can set up or copy the USA business unit TableSet.
You save time by sharing tables and using previously created SetIDs. This is because PeopleSoft reduces the amount of time required to implement a similar business unit.
Step 15TableSets are the building blocks of your PeopleSoft implementation and are identified by a SetID that links to tables. By defining common TableSets and sharing them, you can reduce the amount of redundant work required to implement and maintain your installation. Also, where required, you can create custom TableSets to handle unique business unit requirements.
Step 16Congratulations, you have successfully gained an understanding of Project Costing.