Properties and Characteristics of Activities

Activities are user-definable entities that you can associate with other activities, different scenarios, and different planning models.

In Planning and Budgeting, the single most important implementation decision you will undertake is defining and implementing the activities your organization requires. You should first create an implementation project plan that contains the following three elements:

• The activities and scenarios that you require, and their attributes.

• When you will define, stage, and release the required activities and scenarios.

• The requirements around the data when the activity edits are complete.

Planning and Budgeting provides three activity types: line item, position, and asset.

You select one of the predefined activity types (line item, position, or asset) on the Activity page (BP_ACTIVITY). Activity type properties are implied and immutable, and you cannot create your own activity types. However, you can create new activities.

Each activity can use a different approval dimension called the Planning Center dimension. This means that you can define activities with different workflow, approval levels, users, dimensions, and members. Though you do not have to define activities with the same dimensions and members, you must define each activity with an account dimension and a planning center dimension.

You also cluster activities into an activity group. This is a collection of activities and dimension hierarchies to apply across all the dimensions of the activities. You use the Activity Group component (BP_ACTIVITY_GRP) to perform the following tasks:

• Group activities.

• Create new activities for the group.

• Define hierarchies and members for dimensions, activity relationships, and relationship dependencies for grouped activities.

• Copy an activity group definition into a new definition.

You must associate line item activities with method groups on the Activity Groups component. However, you do not associate method groups to position and asset activities.

Use the Hierarchies page (BP_ACTV_GRP_HIER) of the Activity Group component to establish dimension information:

• To ensure comparability, each of the dimensions must use the same tree (or no tree at all) across all of the affected activities.

  For all dimensions, you must establish a dimension setID that controls which trees and dimension members the system displays as available for selection.

• The system automatically exports account dimensions and any dimensions used as the planning center dimensions to the General Ledger, as indicated by the Export to General Ledger run control page.

  Note: In order to export the line item activity data back to General Ledger, you must also select the Export to GL option on the Activity page.

• You can perform dimension member value mapping on the Dimension Member Mapping page (BP_DATA_MAP).

  For a specific activity group and dimension, this functionality enables you to define a range of dimension members that you map to a target dimension member. For example, you can define all dimension member IDs from 100 to 500 map to dimension member ID 600. This mapping is applicable to all scenarios associated with the activity.

Use the Members page (BP_ACTV_DIM_MEM) of the Activity Group component to establish dimension member information. This page displays the dimensions (or ChartFields) for each activity of an activity group. You define whether one, all, or multiple dimension members are included in an activity, and specify member values. The default value is All Members.

After defining dimensions and members, you should verify if their as of date has changed. The as of date that you use on the activity group page determines all valid dimension trees and members for the planning model it is assigned. Once an activity has been staged, you will not be able to change it. This as of date can be future dated, in order to pick up dimension members that may not yet be active until the next year. Based on the as of date you enter, all dimension members at that point in time can be included in your planning model activities, even if the member becomes inactive after the as of date.

Use the Relationships page (BP_ACTV_DEPEND) of the Activity Group component to establish any dependencies. We discuss this in more detail in the Activity Relationships section.

See Understanding Activity Relationships.

You source line item activities from ledger tables. Normally, you derive your line item source data from your organization's general ledger tables. However, you can use any data contained in a ledger structure as your line item activities' source data.

Line item activities are user-defined, more than any other activity type. These activities have interrelationship and communication abilities that position and asset activities do not have, as follows:

• You can relate line item activities to other line item activities, and position and asset activities.

• You can define line item activities as reference data.

Line item activities can be separated into two categories: top-down and bottom-up.

• Top-down activities: Use when creating strategic long-term plans at a more summarized level.

• Bottom-up activities: Use when creating detailed annual budget plans.

See Integrating with PeopleSoft General Ledger.

You can source position activities from PeopleSoft or third-party human resources applications data, such as position and employee job data. These activities share the following characteristics:

• Position activities only have an expense impact.

• Position activities can be modified.

  This means that you can work with existing and new data, such as when an employee receives a promotion and you use the previous and current compensation data, or you create new positions anticipated for the proposed budget year.

• Position and employee expense in the position activity can be shared across more than one planning center budget.

• Position activities are not sourced from a ledger.

  But there can be an expense impact on the budget ledger, when the position activity is a child of a line item parent activity.

See Integrating with PeopleSoft HRMS.

You can source asset activities from in-service asset data for your organization.

Unlike position activities, existing in-service assets in the asset activity cannot be modified or updated. Your users can only add new or update the new budgeted assets to capture the assets' depreciation expense and cost.

Asset activities have a twofold impact on your organization's accounts—depreciation accounts, asset accounts and optionally, the cash accounts. Asset activities may also potentially impact your organization's balance sheet and income statement.

The asset depreciation and cost in the asset activity cannot be shared across more than one planning center budget.

Asset activities are not sourced from a ledger. But there can be an expense and cost impact on the budget ledger, when the asset activity is a child of a line item parent activity.

See Using Data from PeopleSoft Asset Management.