9 Future Cost

The Future Cost Engine calculates the expected cost of an item/supplier/origin country/location at a given point into the future. These values are used to help in many scenarios (for example, when trying to determine what a margin will be at a point in the future, or when doing investment buying).

The future cost engine can execute as either a synchronous, asynchronous or batch process. The focus of this chapter is the batch processes. To support the discussion of the batch processes, there is general discussion of the engine that is also applicable to the synchronous and asynchronous execution of the engine.

There are also two other programs that are referenced in this chapter related to cost - Pricing Cost Refresh and WAC Refresh. These are both used to refresh materialized views that are used by the WAC Variance report that is displayed by default on the Finance Analyst dashboard.