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Planview Customer Success Center

Transitioning from Task-Level to Project-Level Expenses

Note: With the October 2019 release, users will no longer be able to create new task expense estimates.

In October 2018 the ability to record and manipulate expenses and revenue at the project level became generally available (GA) in PPM Pro with the financial entries feature. Any existing customers who are using task-level expenses should plan to transition to the new project-level feature as soon as possible. Currently, the legacy task-level expenses can be used concurrently with project-level financial entries - that is, you can enter financials at each level and PPM Pro will roll up the values appropriately, although there are not any reports that show available fields for both task-level expenses and financial entries. Be sure not to duplicate entries at each level, as they will be double counted.

In October 2019, Planview will disable the ability to create new task-level estimates and expenses for all users (reports still available unless you disable the feature altogether). Eventually we will disable the task-level expense feature altogether, meaning you will no longer have the ability to report on historical data at the task level.

With that timeline in mind, you can decide how you want to cut over to the project-level financial entry module. 

  1. Use Project-level financial entries for go-forward costs, leave Task-level for historical costs (see below).
  2. If you need to capture existing task-level data, run reports on material task estimates, export and save. Note that reporting on existing task-level expenses is supported for the immediate future. 
  3. For in-flight projects that will span several years, migrate the current material estimates (see below). Don't forget to manually delete the logged expenses and material task estimates at the task level. If you have maintenance projects that span multiple years, best practice is to close out the project at the end of the calendar year and start a new project for the new year (using project-level financials).

Recommended: Use Project-level financial entries for go-forward costs, leave Task-level expenses for historical costs

  1. Start new work using project-level financial entries
  2. Keep existing task-level expenses as they are
  3. PPM Pro will disable ability to create new estimates and expenses at the task level in October 2019 release
  4. Customers can continue to report on historical task-level data for several years

Don’t duplicate task expenses at the project level; PPM Pro rolls up and reports on both.

Optional: Move Task-level costs to Project-level for in-flight Projects

Use this option only if you have in-flight projects that will span several years and that are currently using task-level expenses. Alternatively, for long-running maintenance projects, for example, close them at the end of the calendar year and create new projects that use the new financial entries (best practices recommend annual projects for maintenance).

  1. Create a UDF to temporarily store the task material estimate ID. Use this ID to tie the imported forecasts to the actuals that you will import.
  2. Run a report using the “All Material Estimates” source to gather estimated costs Include Task Material Estimate ID. You will also need the Project Id for the Data Import
  3. Run a report using the “All Expense Entries” source to gather actual costs. Include Task Material Estimate ID
  4. Use the Data Import functionality to import Finance Entry Forecast (Material Expense Estimates) against projects and map the Task Material Expense ID to your UDF.
  5. Run a Forecast Report (Include Forecast ID and UDF Task Material Estimate ID).  
  6. Using the Expense Entry Report from step 3 and the Forecast report from step 5, export both to Excel and do a VLookup to tie the Forecast ID to the Task Material Estimate ID
  7. With the output from the VLookup, use the Data Import functionality to import the Actuals (now financial entry actuals) against projects.
  8. Delete the expense entries and material estimates from the task level (to prevent doubling up the costs).
  9. Ask the Customer Care team to disable Task-level expenses once moved
  10. Use Project-level financial entries going forward

About Expense Approvals

With the phasing out of task-level expenses, the task expense approval feature will no longer be supported. Instead, project-level expense feature supports a combination of alerts and permissions to help monitor and control your organization's expense process. For example, you can:

  • set up permissions to allow expense submitters to enter values for actuals only (Project > Edit > Actuals); they can have View permissions on Forecasts (Project > View > Forecasts). You can decide if expense submitters are allowed to Delete their actuals.
  • configure alerts to notify expense managers if financial entries are created, modified, or deleted

See Setting Up Permissions for Financial Entries and About Alerts.