Before you Begin

This 30-minute tutorial shows you how to add an indirect project and define assumptions for standard rates and work time. The sections build on each other and should be completed sequentially.

Background

With Projects, you can bridge the gap between project planning systems and the financial planning process. You can assess the impact organizational projects and initiatives have on overall corporate resources and ensure they align with short and long term financial targets.

You can enable and plan for Contract, Capital, and Indirect project types.

In this tutorial, you add an indirect project and define assumptions for standard rates and work time.

Indirect projects, also called internal projects, have a cost impact but don’t generate revenue.

For example, an IT project that creates a portal for the Human Resources team to track personal details of employees is an Indirect project.

If a project is classified as Indirect, you can do only expense budgeting for the project. You can, however, plan financial and non-financial benefits of the project.

What Do You Need?

An EPM Cloud Service instance allows you to deploy and use one of the supported business processes. To deploy another business process, you must request another EPM Enterprise Cloud Service instance or remove the current business process.

  • Have Service Administrator access to an EPM Enterprise Cloud Service instance. The instance should not have a business process created.
  • Upload and import this snapshot into your instance.

Note:

If you run into migration errors importing the snapshot, re-run the migration excluding the HSS-Shared Services component, as well as the Security and User Preferences artifacts in the Core component. For more information on uploading and importing snapshots, refer to the Administering Migration for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud documentation.

Reviewing User Variables

User Variables were added when the business process was created. User variables act as filters in forms, enabling planners to focus only on certain members. In this section, you review the values set for user variables.

  1. Click Navigator (Navigator), then under Tools, click User Preferences.
    User Preferences
  2. On the left, click User Variables.
    User variables
  3. Review the selected members for each dimension:
    User variables with selected Members
  4. Return to the home page. On the upper right, click Home icon (Home).

Navigating the Indirect Project Tabs

In this section, you navigate to Projects and view the dashboards and forms associated with Indirect Projects.

  1. On the home page, click Projects, and then Project Summary.
    Project Summary

    Project Summary is opened with the Indirect vertical tab displayed. There is no data displayed on the Overview dashboard because there are no projects in this application.

    Indirect Overview
  2. Review the data point-of-view (POV) and click the Project dropdown list to display its options.
    POV

    The POV members are taken from user variable values. The Project dropdown lists only Indirect Projects since only this type of project is enabled in the application.

  3. Click and review the following horizontal tabs:
    Indirect horizontal tabs

    • Indirect Projects Overview—displays a high-level dashboard-type overview of indirect projects.
    • Indirect Projects Variance—enables you to perform variance analysis comparing budget and actuals for project plans.
    • Project Details—enables you to manage and review projects and project details.
    • EVM (Earned Value Management)—displays project schedule variances.

Adding an Indirect Project

  1. Click the Project Details horizontal tab.
  2. In the grid's whitespace, right-click and select Add Project.
    Adding projects
  3. In Add Project, enter or select the following:
    Property Value
    Enter Project Name Digital Mobile Web
    Enter Project Start Date 4/1/22
    Enter Project End Date 11/30/25
  4. Verify your entries and click Launch.
    Details
  5. At the information message, click OK.
    Information message

    The project was added and displays on the form.

    Project displayed on the form
  6. For Digital Mobile Web, set the Project Priority to High.
  7. For Project Category, select Digital Transformation.
  8. Review your selections and click Save.
    Saving new details
  9. At the information message, click OK.
    Information message

    The background color of "dirty" (yellow) cells change to white when new or updated data is saved to Planning.

    Saved new data

    Tip:

    You can set Override Standard Labor Rates and Override Equipment Rates to Yes if you want to explicitly define rates for the project instead of using assumptions.

Defining Assumptions

In this section, you set up assumptions that drive calculations for project-related expenses.

  1. From the vertical tabs on the left, click Assumptions tab (Assumptions).
    Navigate to Assumptions

    Assumptions opens with the Standard Rates horizontal tab displayed.

    Assumptions tab
  2. Click and review the following horizontal tabs:
    • Standard Rates—set standard rates for enabled expenses, such as labor, equipment, and materials.

      In this tutorial, the application is enabled for labor and equipment driver-based expenses.

      Enabled expense drivers
    • Overhead—specify overhead for different accounts. For example, you can plan the overhead rate for Engineering or Manufacturing, or allocate a Facilities overhead.
    • Working Days and Hours—specify the working days and hours in a month; it can vary by entity. For example, you can set different working days and hours for different regions or for different departments.
    • Discount Rate—Specify the discount rate per year; used in net present value (NPV) calculations.

Setting Standard Rates

  1. In Standard Rates, verify that the Project Element in the POV is set to Standard Labor.
    Standard Labor Project Element
  2. In the grid, enter the following values:
    Assumption values
  3. Verify your entries and click Save.

    When the background color of the "dirty" (yellow) cells turn to white, data is saved to Planning.

    Saved data

Setting Work Days and Hours

  1. From the horizontal tabs, click Working Days and Hours.
  2. In the grid, enter the following values:
    Work Day and Hour Assumptions
  3. Verify your entries and click Save.

    Data is saved to Planning.

    Data is saved

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