Setting Up Financial Impact Analysis
This section provides an overview of financial impact analysis and how to:
Enable financial impact analysis.
Set up workflow for financial impact analysis.
Report financial impact.
Financial Impact Analysis (FIA) is an optional feature that you can enable in order to track the financial impact of asset discrepancies between physical inventory and Asset Repository data. PeopleSoft IT Asset Management (ITAM) combines IT and financial asset management processes into a single repository already embedded in your organizational business processes of procurement, payables, help desk and financial reporting. Financial Impact enables the financial presentation of the fusion of technical and financial asset management policies into a centralized application, ensuring that not only the CFO and the CIO have a single source of aggregate information but also provides for the management of financial lists that can be tailored to financial asset managers for an immediate look at the impact of pending transactions.
Key components of ITAM are asset reconciliation of exceptions and the presentation of assets that are no longer reporting to the system. Because IT assets are perpetually inventoried, you can utilize the asset reconciliation process to identify book versus physical discrepancies as well as identify assets that are no longer reporting. The FIA feature delivers relevant financial information about those discrepancies that require retirements. With this functionality, ITAM provides a useful tool for immediate disclosure of material changes to financial conditions.
ITAM provides timely visibility into the potential financial impact of transactions that require a retirement as those transactions are routed to Finance. This ensures that the Finance department can immediately react to any material differences, both from an update to the financial records as well as from a forecast and external reporting perspective. This is accomplished through workflow notifications to key financial personnel and through financial data provided within inquiries and portal pagelets. The financial calculation can be presented in an aggregate or for a selected number of assets.
When you enable Financial Impact Analysis, the financial impact of discrepancies reported includes:
Original cost of the asset.
Net Book Value (NBV) of the asset.
Fair Value (FV) of the asset.
In addition to providing value to the Finance user, having the financial impact information available as an optional display in the Inventory Exceptions and Assets Not Reporting pagelets, for example, will provide the ITAM user with a data point that will enable them to quickly ascertain the materiality of the retirements needed, thereby helping to prioritize which issues to resolve first.
Enabling Financial Impact Analysis
To enable Financial Impact Analysis:
Select the Financial Impact check box on the Installation Options - Asset Management page.
Select the Financial Impact options within User Preferences - IT Asset Management to display financial data for users that are secured for access to the data. Select to Show Net Book Value, Show Cost, and Show Fair Market Value.
Select the Financial Impact check box from the Business Rule page to display financial data within Manage Exceptions.
Setting Up Workflow for Financial Impact Analysis
You can send messages to the financial asset managers to alert them about transactions that have financial impact that need to be retired. The messages are stored in the Message Catalog and are context-driven. When in the Manage Exceptions page, the Manage Exceptions message is chosen, along with the role specified in the associated Route to Finance action. When in the Assets Not Reporting page, the Assets Not Reporting message is chosen, along with the role specified in the associated Route to Finance action
See Managing Exceptions.
Reporting Financial Impact
From either the Inventory Exceptions or Assets Not Reporting pagelet, you can drill into the Manage Exceptions detail page or Assets Not Reporting detail, respectively. From these detail pages you display, filter, sort and select assets that appear as exceptions or assets not reporting in the comparison between Asset Repository Manager data and data from the field (third-party data).
For Manage Exceptions, identify assets that have financial impact and that are of current interest. You can save the list for a financial asset manager or act on the list from Manage Exceptions in the same manner as with FIA disabled. You can see immediate totals of the selected assets or you can progress to the Select Actions component that allows you to preview the scope of the route to finance action as well as the totals for the financial impact of the that action. This preview is a simple count of the assets against which you act, given the current settings. The count appears in the Scope column in the Select Actions component. Preview Scope allows you to review what is about to happen and compare it to what is expected. Once you are assured of your plan, you Submit Actions to route the transactions to the financial worklist. Alternatively, prior to selecting the actions, you can save and store a financial list or you can also modify an existing financial list.
The data content of the Inventory Exceptions pagelet and the Manage Exceptions page is determined by Business Rules. ITAM Business rules are the instructions and definitions that define and describe how an asset and its attributes in one database are similar or dissimilar to the same asset being described in another database. Business rules also specify the actions and processes to be invoked when comparisons fail. Only business rules that are enabled for Financial impact will be used when FIA is enabled.
From the Assets Not Reporting pagelet, you can drill into the Manage Assets Not Reporting page where the format is similar to Manage Exceptions, but does not use a separate Select Actions component. This feature continues to function in a manner consistent with Financial Impact disabled.
When you save a Financial List in either Manage Exceptions or Assets Not Reporting, the list simultaneously becomes available to the Financial List Inquiry search and detail pages. Review the Financial List Inquiry detail page for a more powerful and simpler look at financial impact.