Different Ways of Managing Project Lifecycle

As a project manager, you can use the Project Management work area to manage the complete project lifecycle. First create projects for work planning, then have the project administrator enable the project for financial management. Alternatively, the project administrator can create the project directly in the Project Financial Management work area. Use one of the following methods to create a project for financial management:

Create projects in the Project Management work area, develop the project plan, optionally adding financial tasks, and enabling attributes, such as chargeable and billable. Later when you're ready for financial planning, a project administrator can enable the project for financial management from the Project Financial Management work area, Tasks panel tab.
Create projects in the Project Financial Management work area. The project administrator can then directly add a project manager in the Project Financial Management work area. The project manager can now manage the complete project lifecycle in the Project Management work area.

Note: If the project manager in the Project Management work area isn't an HCM resource, then the project administrator must separately add a project manager when the project is enabled for financial management.

Work Planning Before Financial Management

In many circumstances, project managers may need to create a project for planning, scheduling, or proposal purposes, without the need for financial management. The project manager can quickly create a project, add tasks, and plan resources. For example, you have a project related to a sales opportunity and the project manager must assess the schedule and staffing needs. The project can then continue indefinitely without financial management, or the project administrator can enable financial management for the project.

First create a project in the Project Management work area, and later enable it to manage the financial aspects of project planning. — The figure shows the project lifecycle from initial work planning to later managing the financial aspects of your projects.

You can create a project for planning and scheduling in one of the following ways:

Using the UI: from the Manage Project Plan page, My Projects infolet on the Project Management Dashboard, a requirement backlog, or from Oracle Fusion Sourcing.
Import Project Plan file-based data import feature.
Project Work Plan Version 2 SOAP web service.
Projects REST service.

Tip: Create a project without using a project template.
Microsoft Project (Desktop) integration with Project Management.

When you create a project for planning and scheduling, you can optionally select a work plan template to provide the initial set of financial and nonfinancial tasks, milestones, and resources. Later, you can add more tasks individually or from work plan templates. Once you have created your project from the Project Management work area, you can:

Schedule project work
Assign work to team members
Request and assign resources
Have team members report progress

Enabling Project for Financial Management

Project administrators can enable the project for financial management using the Enable Project for Financial Management action from the Tasks panel tab in the Project Financial Management work area. Specify the organization, project number, and a project template. You can then perform activities such as creating budgets and forecasts, capturing project costs, and monitoring overall project profitability and financial performance. This approach enables you to manage your work and resources, calculate project costs, and generate invoices. When the project is enabled for financial management, the application performs the following actions:

Makes the financial tasks available for financial planning activities.
Updates the financial project plan with task start and finish dates.
Copies the following attributes from the project template:
- Project Status
- Project Unit
- Project Type
- Project Currency
- Project Functional Currency
- Planning Project Flag
- Business Unit
- Legal Entity
- Created From Project
- Work Type
- Service Type
- Budgetary Controlled Flag
Rolls up the labor resource effort and expense amounts to the lowest-level financial tasks, obtains the summarized resource planning information for each lowest-level financial task, and maps each resource against the primary planning resource breakdown structure.

Project administrators can manually enter the remaining attributes such as team members, project classifications, KPIs, transaction controls, cross-charge options, descriptive flexfields, budgets and forecasts, and assets.

Enable a Workplan Project for Financial Management

After a project manager creates a project in the Project Management work area, the project administrator can enable the project for financial management to perform financial activities, such as collecting costs, budgeting, forecasting, generating revenue, and billing.

Complete the following steps to enable your project for financial management:

Navigate to the Project Financial Management work area.
On the My Projects page, click the Enable Project for Financial Management link in the Tasks panel tab.
In the Enable Project for Financial Management window, complete the following steps:
1. Select the project name from the Project Name list. The application automatically populates the Project Number field based on the project you select.
2. Select the project template from the Project Template list.
3. Select the project organization from the Organization list.
Click OK.

Deriving Dates for Financial Tasks

Start and finish dates are mandatory on financial project plan tasks. If a financial task doesn't have a start and finish date in the work plan and you enable a project for financial management, then the application derives the task dates as follows:

If the parent task has dates, then subtasks use the same dates.
If the parent tasks don't have dates, then subtasks use the project dates.
If the project doesn't have a finish date, then the project start date is used as the task finish date.

Work Planning and Financial Management Together

Create a project already enabled for financial management when the project is approved and resources need to report time and expenses against the project immediately. You can do so by creating the project using a project template or another project. Create any new work planning tasks as subtasks of the financial tasks.

The task dates assigned to financial tasks which are created using a work plan template or by copying a project plan are displayed in the Manage Project Plan page by default. Once you select the Define Common Financial Task Dates Across Work and Financial Planning check box, the financial project plans and the corresponding work plans you create have common dates and automatically sync the date changes. However, keep in mind that the automatic syncing of date changes doesn't happen for plans that already exist at the time of selecting the check box.

Note: If you didn't select the Define Common Financial Task Dates Across Work and Financial Planning check box, then you must run the Update Financial Project Plan and Progress process to copy the updated project plan and progress information to the Manage Financial Project Plan page.

Manage the financial aspects of the project by creating projects directly in the Project Financial Management work area. — The figure shows how you can plan work and manage the financial aspects of your projects at the same time.

You can alternatively create a financial project plan with financial tasks in one of the following ways:

Import Projects file-based data import feature
Project Plan SOAP web service
Projects REST service
Microsoft Project integration with Oracle Fusion Project Foundation

The project manager then can add nonfinancial tasks and assign resources to the project and tasks on the Manage Project Plan page in the Project Management work area.

Updating the Financial Project Plan and Progress

As you continue to add tasks, staff the project, schedule tasks, and update progress, you must also update the financial project plan with the latest information. Use the Update Financial Project Plan and Progress action on the Manage Project Plan page of the Project Management work area to transfer the updated project plan and progress information to the Manage Financial Project Plan page. To update progress, you can take any of the following approaches that map to your business flows and project roles:

Update physical percent complete on the project plan and then choose to automatically capture and publish financial progress as part of the update flow.
Update physical percent complete on the project plan and then choose capture financial progress as part of the update flow. Then, review, update, and publish financial progress as a separate step from the Progress tab on the Manage Financial Project Plan page.
Perform all financial progress activities from the Progress tab on the Manage Financial Project Plan page. In this approach, financial progress updates are completely separate.

The application automatically summarizes resources, effort, and task dates to the lowest-level financial task.

Note: If you can only access the Manage Financial Project Plan page for a project in the Project Management work area, then you may need to be added as a project manager on the Manage Project Resources page for the project. To do this, either ask someone who already has access to add you, or ask the application administrator to add you from the Manage Project User Provisioning page (query the resource and select the action to Add Resource as Project Manager, then select the project).

Caution: When you use Project Execution Management, the Manage Project Plan page is the master project plan for planning and scheduling. Don't do any planning directly on the Manage Financial Project Plan page. Each time you choose the action to update financial project plan and progress, the process replaces all planning information in the financial project plan, including any planning done directly on the Manage Financial Project Plan page, with the latest plan from the Manage Project Plan page.

Summarizing Planning to Lowest-Level Financial Tasks

Project managers can create detailed project plans that include labor and expense resources that create corresponding resource assignments on the financial project plan on summarization. In addition, you can add any missing resources to non-centrally controlled planning resource breakdown structures (PRBS) automatically without having to define them explicitly before planning. During summarization, the application derives the job and organization for a named person from the person's primary assignment in Human Capital Management. Similarly, the expenditure category associated with an expenditure type is derived from the Manage Expenditure Types setup task.

Summarization takes place when you:

Execute the Update Financial Project Plan and Progress process.
Enable a project for financial management.
Generate budget or forecast from project resources.

Summarization rolls up the labor resource effort and expense amounts, obtains the summarized resource planning information for each lowest-level financial task, and maps each resource against the primary planning resource breakdown structure for the project. Job and Organization are the supported attributes for the named person.

Here’s how the summarization works:

If the PRBS doesn't use the named person or expenditure type but contains job or organization or expenditure category, then:
- If the PRBS is centrally controlled, follows the precedence logic and maps the resource to the element if exists. Otherwise, map to the generic labor class.
- If the PRBS is non-centrally controlled, creates the element with job or organization or expenditure category and maps the resource to the corresponding element.
If the PRBS uses supported attributes such as named person, job, organization, expenditure category or expenditure type, then:
- If the exact resource combination exists, maps the resource to the corresponding element.
- If the exact resource combination doesn't exist and if the PRBS is centrally controlled, maps the resource to the corresponding element based on precedence logic. If no element exists then, maps the resource to the generic labor class.
- If the exact resource combination doesn't exist and if the PRBS is non-centrally controlled then, creates the element with respective elements and maps the resource to that element.
If the PRBS uses unsupported attributes such as expenditure type, expenditure category with named person, or job, or organization then:
- If the named person, job, or organization has single occurrence in the PRBS, maps the resource to that corresponding element. Otherwise, maps to the generic labor class.

Assume that you have the following job details defined in HCM.

Jobs Defined in HCM

Named Person	Job
Phil Williams	Consultant
Alice Parker	Principal Consultant

Let’s say the following expenditure types and categories are defined using the Manage Expenditure Types task.

Expenditure Types and Categories

Expenditure Type	Expenditure Category
Rent	Rental expenses
Administration	Overhead expenses

The following table explains some scenarios of resource mapping for labor and expense resources.

Resource Mapping Scenarios

PRBS Definition		Resources Planned on the Work Plan	Result of Summarization
Resource Format	Planning Resources	Resources Planned on the Work Plan	Result of Summarization
Job: Named Person Expenditure Category: Expenditure Type	Consultant: Phil Williams Principal Consultant: Alice Parker Rental Expenses: Rent	Phil Williams Alice Parker Rent	As per the PRBS definition: Alice Parker rolls up to the existing PrincipalConsultant: Alice Parker resource Phil Williams rolls up to Consultant: Phil Williams resource Rent rolls up to Rental Expenses: Rent resource
Job: Named Person Expenditure Category: Expenditure Type	Consultant: Phil Williams Overhead Expenses: Administration	Phil Williams Alice Parker Administration	As per the PRBS definition: Phil Williams rolls up to Consultant: Phil Williams resource Administration rolls up to Overhead Expenses: Administration resource Since Alice Parker isn’t defined in the PRBS, the application: Rolls up Alice Parker to the generic labor resource class, if the PRBS is centrally controlled. Creates Alice Parker: Principal Consultant element if the PRBS is non-centrally controlled.
Expenditure Type: Named Person Expenditure Type: Job Expenditure Category	Overtime: Alice Parker Overtime: Principal Consultant Overtime: Phil Williams Straight Time: Phil Williams Overhead Expenses	Alice Parker Phil Williams Administration	As per the PRBS definition: Alice rolls up to Overtime: Alice Parker Phil Williams has more than one occurrence in the PRBS and hence maps to the generic labor class. Administration rolls up to Overhead Expenses because Administration isn’t present as an expenditure type but it's expenditure category exists in the PRBS.

Tracking Project Performance

Project managers can use the Project Management Dashboard to monitor the progress on work and financial performance of the project. To see the latest information on the dashboard, submit the Update Project Performance Data process from the Scheduled Processes page, the Actions panel tab on the Manage Project Plan page, or the Project Financial Management work area. Project managers can run this process for all the projects they're managing. The Health, Cost Budget, Milestones, Assignments, Time Cards, and Uninvoiced Costs infolets enable you to quickly review overall health, progress, and financial status of projects and take action to resolve issues.

Tracking Financial Actual Efforts and Costs from the Manage Project Plan Page

Project Managers can track actual financial efforts and costs from the Manage Project Plan page and compare them with planned values. Here's are the columns that you can enable:

Financial Actual Effort
Financial Actual Burdened Cost in Project Currency
Financial Actual Burdened Cost in Project Ledger Currency

Run the Update Project Performance Data process to view the latest information in these columns. Keep in mind that these columns are available only for projects that are enabled for financial management.