Understanding Project Evaluation

You can set up templates that contain evaluation criteria for project and activity summary information. The templates can be used by anyone with security access to the Project Valuation component (PC_VALN_ANALYTICS). To perform the evaluation, you select a business unit, project, and template that the system uses to calculate a summary view of different project dimensions, and an activity-based view of financial data.

Project-level summary data is set up with these criteria:

• Transaction group criteria: Transaction rows with the same analysis group, source type, category, and subcategory.

  Transaction group summary values appear on the Project Valuation page, and can be used in formulas to calculate financial status.

• Reporting calculations: Formulas using up to three transaction groups and operators (+, −, *, and /).

  You can create arithmetic equations using parentheses to calculate statistics such as the actual percent of budget. Reporting calculation results appear below the transaction group summary rows on the Project Valuation page.

• Analysis groups: Groups that are used to summarize the project ChartField rows that appear in the Project Overview grid on the Project Valuation page.

• Project ChartField criteria: Summary rows with the same combination of source type, category, and subcategory.

  The system summarizes project-related ChartField rows by user-specified analysis groups.

Flexible Analysis is a method of analyzing a project's costs at these levels:

• Project

• Summary activity

• Activity

• Source type

• Category

• Subcategory

The Flexible Analysis page provides a view of activity costs based on the analysis groups that are specified in a flexible analysis template. Flexible Analysis is an interactive tool that works effectively if you want to view one data item at a time, such as costs by source type or category. The feature does not provide an overall financial analytic of the project.

You must create a template before you can perform flexible analysis. Templates specify the analysis types that the system uses to gather project costs. You can save a template as a user default to save time performing flexible analyses. You can modify flexible analysis templates as required.

Projects are made of transactions that are in various stages of the project cycle. Transactions in progress (TIPs) are tracked so that you can see project cost information before it reaches the Project Transaction table (PROJ_RESOURCE). Project managers can identify potential problem areas and see where each part of the project stands in the overall process. TIP information focuses attention on what needs to be resolved to ensure that the project is running smoothly and is not delayed because of a particular problem.

Each PeopleSoft feeder system that has costs associated with a project sends TIP data to PeopleSoft Project Costing by running an Application Engine process that is specific to that feeder system. TIP pages display fields that are associated with PeopleSoft Project Costing, and key fields that are retrieved from primary feeder tables and pooled during the Application Engine process.

This table lists the types of TIPs that PeopleSoft Project Costing delivers:

Using the Transactions in Progress Summary (PC_PETIP_SUM) Application Engine Batch Process

The Transaction in Progress Summary (PC_PETIP_SUM) application engine evaluates the line records of PeopleSoft products with which PeopleSoft Project Costing integrates, such as PeopleSoft Purchasing, Payables, Inventory, Expenses, and so on, and refreshes the transaction data into PeopleSoft Project Costing transaction summary tables. Transactions in Progress pages use this data to display the transaction status. You can schedule this process to run automatically as often as needed based on your business processes.

When querying large tables, the Transactions in Progress Summary (PC_PETIP_SUM) application engine enables you to run a batch process to load the transaction in progress data coming from the feeder systems (AP, GL, AR, INV, PO, BI, GM). Running this process decreases the amount of time required to load the transactions in progress from the feeder systems to the TIP staging tables and display them in the PeopleSoft Project Costing Transaction in Progress page .

The PC_PETIP_SUM (Transactions in Progress Summary) application engine loads feeder system transactions using the online transaction in progress criteria. After the Transactions in Progress Summary application engine runs, the staging tables are populated, which enables you to search for and display the transactions in progress on the Transactions in Progress page in PeopleSoft Project Costing. You can load the transactions for one or all feeder systems on the Run Control page.

This diagram shows the Transactions in Progress Summary batch process flow.

Note: The PeopleSoft Expenses Transaction in Progress Loader application engine (EX_TIP_LOAD) enables you to run a batch process to load a large amount of PeopleSoft Expenses transaction in progress data from PeopleSoft Expenses. See Understanding Transactions in Progress

The Projects Reconciliation Workbench enables project managers to review all of the transactions in progress for a single project. You must run the Transaction in Process Summary (PC_PETIP_SUM) process (Project Costing, Utilities, Transaction in Process Summary) to load the TIP (Transactions in Progress) tables before you create or review a reconciliation ID. You create various reconciliation scenarios such as Project Closeout or End of Month Review by assigning each one a reconciliation ID and associating it with a business unit and a project ID. After setting up this information, you select specific criteria and search for transactions in progress associated with:

• PeopleSoft Project Costing

  You can specify a project activity and an analysis type, which apply to all of the subsystem transactions, or leave these fields blank and the system displays all transactions for all activities and analysis types. You can display Project Costing transactions in progress that have not been costed or priced (ALLTOPC), as well as unbilled transactions during a period of time that the project was inactive (INACTPC).

• PeopleSoft Billing

  You can search for and display PeopleSoft Billing transactions in progress (BITOPC ) for the project in a grid on the Billing page.

• PeopleSoft Commitment Control

  You can search for and display unposted project budgets, budgets not distributed to PeopleSoft Commitment Control, or budgets not distributed to PeopleSoft Project Costing (BDTOPC ) for the project in a grid on the Budgets page.

• PeopleSoft Contracts

  You can search for and display project activities that are not assigned with a contract line for a project that is sourced from PeopleSoft Grants, PeopleSoft Project Costing, or both (CANOPC) for the project in the grid on the Contracts page.

• PeopleSoft Expenses

  You can search for and display PeopleSoft Expenses transactions in progress (EXTOPC) and approved time transactions in progress (TMTOPC ) for the project in the grid on the Expenses page.

• PeopleSoft Grants F & A

  You can search for and display PeopleSoft Grants F & A (Facilities and Administration) transactions in progress (FATOPC) for the project in the grid on the Grants F & A page.

• PeopleSoft General Ledger

  You can search for and display any PeopleSoft General Ledger journal transactions in progress (GLTOPC) for the project in the grid on the General Ledger page.

• PeopleSoft Inventory

  You can search for and display any PeopleSoft Inventory transactions in progress (INTOPC) for the project in the grid on the Inventory page.

• PeopleSoft Purchasing

  You can search for purchase orders (POTOPC) and requisitions (REQTOPC) in progress, as well as unsourced purchase orders (UNSPO) and requisitions (UNSREQ) that are closed, mass liquidated, open, unavailable for sourcing, and canceled, and that are associated with the selected project. You display this information in the four grids on the Purchasing page.

• PeopleSoft Payables

  You can search for PeopleSoft Payables transactions in progress (APTOPC) and unpaid vouchers that have been distributed to Project Costing (APNOPY), associate them with a method of payment based on the contract associated with the selected project, and display this information in the grids on the Payables page.

• PeopleSoft Receivables

  You can search for and display PeopleSoft Receivables transactions in progress (ARTOPC) for the project in the grid on the Receivables page.

The subsystem tabs that appear depend upon your system's setup. Once you select the search criteria on each page and display the transactions in progress based on this criteria, you save the page. Once you save the page, you can exit the workbench and return to this data later by selecting the same reconciliation ID. If you want to display different data for this reconciliation ID, you click a Reset button, which clears the original search criteria. After you enter the new criteria and search for the transactions, you can save the page again to retain the results. You can also drill down to the source transaction for each transaction listed in each grid.

By using analysis inquiries, you can view inquiry pages that display:

• A financial summary of a project.

• Employee costs by project.

• Employee costs by activity.

By analyzing projects using accumulated costs, you can view project transactions based on:

• Assets

• Budget exceptions

• Time and labor

• Inventory

• Invoices

• Journal entries

• Orders

• Purchase orders

• Vouchers

The PeopleSoft system delivers these summary tables that are used internally by PeopleSoft Project Costing and PeopleSoft Program Management for analytical reporting:

• Project Transactions Summary (PC_ACTIVITY_SUM).

  This table is used by flexible analysis reporting.

• Project Transactions Summary (PC_SUMMARY_TBL).

  This table is used by PeopleSoft Project Costing and PeopleSoft Program Management analytics, including estimate to complete, earned value, forecasting, and project valuation.

• Summary Budget Data (PC_BUD_SUMMARY).

  This table is used by budget versus actual, budget item analysis, and percent complete analyses.

All transactions that enter the Project Transaction table—whether from feeder systems, direct entry through the Add Transactions component (INTFC_PROJ_EXPRESS), or through the Load Third-Party Transactions Application Engine process (PC_INTFEDIT)—trigger the Refresh Summary Tables Application Engine process (PC_SUM_RFSH) to populate all necessary summary tables.

To determine the progress of a project and to assess progress at different levels of the project cycle, PeopleSoft Project Costing delivers tracking methods that are designed to provide information based on a project's percentage of completion.

Project managers can manually report the percent completion of their projects and activities, or the percentage of completion is calculated based on user parameters. Automatically calculated percentages are based on time that is spent on the project and are summarized at the project and activity levels.

If you use PeopleSoft Program Management, you can access the Percent Complete History page and view a chart of the percent complete progression over time for projects and activities.

PeopleSoft Project Costing enables you to analyze profit margins for individual projects. You can view actual profitability trends, profitability details, and the top 10 profitable projects.

Actual profitability trends are displayed in a graph format and in a grid. You enter two periods to compare and analyze values such as the actual revenue amount, the actual cost amount, the actual margin, and the actual margin percent for the period.

Profitability details include revenue, cost, budget, margin, and margin percent at the project level, and you can drill down to details at the activity level.

The top 10 profitable projects are displayed in a graph format and in a grid. You can display the 10 projects with the highest actual margin percent in descending order.

You need to understand these terms when analyzing profit margins: