Transaction Analysis for Project Costs

Project application administrators can use the transaction analysis reports to analyze how a cost rate was calculated for project cost transactions. The reports help to identify causes where a cost rate can’t be determined or a cost rate value is not as expected.

Use the Transaction Analysis for Project Costs Report and Transaction Analysis for Unprocessed Project Costs Report to:

• Identify the root causes for unprocessed transaction errors such as:
  • Rate wasn’t found for the person or person job.
  • Rate wasn’t found for the nonlabor transaction.
  • Application can't find a costing rule for the labor transaction.
  • A rate wasn't found for job X because the job doesn't exist in the job set or isn't mapped to another job in the job set.
• Understand how raw cost rates are derived for unprocessed and processed project cost transactions. For example:
  • Was a labor costing override used?
  • Was a project cost rate override used?
  • Was the correct date-effective rate schedule entry used?
  • Was the correct organization costing rule used for the expenditure organization?

Example

Let’s look at an example that describes how a project application administrator uses the Transaction Analysis for Unprocessed Project Costs Report to assist a project accountant in troubleshooting a costing error.

A project accountant routinely checks for unprocessed project cost exceptions in the Overview page of the Costs work area:

1. The project accountant navigates to the Overview page in the Costs work area.
2. In the Overview page, in the Unprocessed Transactions tab, they notice a number of transactions having exceptions.
3. The project accountant selects a row with exceptions. The exception could be for a specific business unit, transaction source, or document. They drill down to the individual unprocessed transactions using the link in the Exceptions column.
4. The project accountant then clicks the icon in the Errors Exist column for a single unprocessed transaction. The Errors dialog box opens which displays the error, for example: The application can't find a costing rule for the labor transaction.
5. The project accountant makes a note of the reference number and contacts a project application administrator to help resolve this issue, so that they can successfully import the cost transaction.

A Project application administrator can help resolve this issue in the following manner.

1. Navigate to the Reports and Analytics work area.
2. Click Browse Catalog.
3. Navigate to Shared Folders > Projects > Projects Maintenance and open the Transaction Analysis for Unprocessed Costs Report
4. Enter the Unprocessed Transaction Reference as a parameter and click Apply. The application downloads the report output.
5. Open the report output in Excel. The report has four sheets:
   • Report Details - Displays the report parameter values, and runtime details such as the date the report was run and by which user.
   • Transaction Details - Provides a summary of key transaction attributes to assist analysis.
   • Transaction Errors - Provides a summary of any existing errors or warnings relating to the transaction.
   • Costing - Provides a detailed breakdown of cost processing and related setups.
6. Open the Costing sheet in the output report. The tab has number of sections, each of which has detailed guidance. To summarize:
   • Cost Processing - Where a transaction is already costed, this section shows the outcomes of those successful events.
   • Simulated Cost Processing - When the report is run, the transaction is re-processed by costing in simulation mode. This serves two purposes:
     • To check whether the costing error reported in the application still exists. For example, since the error was raised another user may have fixed the costing setups, but has yet to re-run Import Costs.
     • Where a transaction has already been costed the simulated outcome can be compared to the existing cost outcomes, for example, to identify where there have been any changes in costing setups since the transaction was processed.
   • Simulated Cost Processing Errors - Details any errors resulting from the simulated cost processing above.
   • Cost Processing Setups -Lists out all of the application setups that relate to each of the costing methods that are used to calculate raw costs.
7. Assisted by conditional formatting, the project application administrator can see which costing setups (if any) are a match for the transaction being interrogated, and the order of precedence in which they are applied during costing. For example, the project application administrator may notice that:
   • There are labor costing overrides for the person associated with the transaction, but they're not date effective as of the transaction date.
   • There are organization costing rules matching the expenditure business unit of the transaction, but they are not a match for the expenditure organization.
8. Depending on the root cause of the costing exception as identified above, the project application administrator can take the necessary corrective actions. For example, they could add a new organization costing rule for the relevant business unit and expenditure organization.
9. Run the Import Costs process so that the unprocessed cost is imported successfully.