Title: CA Clarity Tuesday Tip: Enabling Clarity for Financials

[Anon Anon]

CA Clarity Tuesday Tip by Shawn Moore, Sr. Principal Support Engineer for 6/07/2011

Today's tip is a simplified set of steps to financially enable Clarity. If you haven't enable Clarity for Financials, you should only try the following on a test/dev system that can be restored. See currency selection note below. Next week, we'll look at the dataflow from timesheets to the ppa_wip table to see how our data moves from one location to another.

Financial Setup (Enabling Clarity for Financial)
================================================

0. Prerequisites: These should be decided prior to following the steps to financially enable Clarity.

a. Determine if the Clarity installation is to support a single currency or multi-currencies.

** If the application is set for Single-Currency option – and the need exists to change the installation to support Multi-currency – take a full back up of database and system files before and after the changes are made in case it becomes necessary to restored the system.

b. Determine the name of the Entity.

It is highly recommended that “The Corporation” be the Entity Name and “CORP” be the Entity Code
for the initial defaults.

c. Determine the default currency for the Entity.
d. Determine the Fiscal Year Type for the Entity.

The options are listed below and can be viewed by navigating to the following location if an Entity already exists.

Administration Tools >> Financial Module >> Setup >> Entity >> (Select on Entity) >>
view the Fiscal Period Type values.
- 13 Periods Per Year
- Annually
- Monthly
- Quarterly
- Weekly

e. Determine the Start Date and Finish Date for each period in the Fiscal Year.

Ok, here are the actual steps to enable Clarity for Financials. Note: these are a sample set of steps and are provided for "experimentation" and learning purposes only. Depending upon your organization's needs, you may need to configure this differently. For implementation help and recommendations on how to get the most out of Clarity financials, please consult our services group.

1. Department OBS
--------------------
Admin Tool -> OBS, click New, enter Name, ID, Levels =1

** level are defined in prj_obs_levels

Add associated Objects
Click Units, click New
Enter Name and ID

2. Location OBS
------------------
Admin Tool -> OBS, click New, enter Name, ID, Levels
Add associated Objects
Click Units, click New
Enter Name and ID


3. Entities, Fiscal Time Periods and Plan defaults
-----------------------------------------------------

a. Entity: Admin Tool -> Finance ->Setup

-- Click New to create an entity, enter values for required field Organization Breakdown Structures, select the Location OBS and Department OBS from 1 & 2 above

b. Fiscal Time Periods (this will be in your entity properties)
Click New, select Period Type and enter required fields
Filter for the Fiscal Time Periods you created
Activate them

c. Plan Defaults
Select Plan Default values (for use in cost plan creation later)


Create all the various classes, definitions, assignments, etc. under finance -> setup
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4. Create Resource Classes (used in the project and cost plan later)

a. Click Resource Classes
b. Click New and enter required fields
c. Make sure it is active

5. Create Company Classes (under Finance-> Setup)

6. Create Work in Process Classes

7. Create Investment Classes

8. Create Transaction Classes (needed for each transaction, may not be used as much, but more that other classes, like investment class)

9. Create Batch Cycle Definitions

10. Create Batch Cycle Assignments

a. Click on the Batch Cycle created above and add yourself

11. Create Batch Cycle Output
a. Create Output Code and specify output path
b. Output path can be your local machine


12. Admin Tool ->Objects->Project -> Attributes
--------------------------------------------------

Click and set “Financial Status” = Hold (in earlier versions this defaulted to open in the attribute definition)

“Open” – Financial Transactions are created.  Timesheet entries are sent to Invalid Transactions.
“Hold” – Financial Transactions not created yet

(setting the attribute default to Hold - this may be the default)


13. Define Matrix (not used a lot, but DST uses this for taxes) - under Finance -> Define Matrix
--------------------------------------------------
Admin Tool -> Define Matrix
(Optional For Cost Codes, Administrative charges, Taxes)


14. Create Rate Matrix (Manage Matrix)
--------------------------------------------------
Admin Tool -> Manage Matrix
Click New, enter Matrix Name and Matrix Type = Cost/Rate
Assign Columns, select columns, like Charge Code, Resource Class, etc
Edit Matrix Rows ->New and enter below values:

For example: From Date = 1/1/2011
To Date = 12/31/2012
Rate = 50
Standard Cost = 30
Actual Cost = 80


15. Associate departments to locations
------------------------------------------

Admin Tool -> Finance -> Setup -> Locations -> choose location -> Departments -> Add --> choose a location

Verify by looking at:

Click Home->Departments->Locations tab and add the locations to departments

** If you don't do this, then step 16 will not show any locations/departments.


16. Home ->External Billing ->Companies (this is an optional step, only needed for External Billing)
--------------------------------------------------
Create one or more companies and set it Active
Financial tab ->General
Select values created above
Financial Location
Financial – Department


17. Home->Resource (create a new resource)
--------------------------------------------------
Click New and create data for a resource and set the resource type to "Labor"
* set up for time tracking properties as well, so you can export transactions to financials.

Click Financial Tab and select values for required fields to financial enabled (all the required fields)

Click Financially Active Checkbox

Financial Location
Financial – Department

Transaction Class

Resource Class

Do the same for

a) Resource and Resource Type = Equipment
b) Resource and Resource Type = Material
c) Resource and Resource Type = Expense
d) Role and Resource Type = Labor

18. Home -> Projects
---------------------------------
a. Create a new project, set Progress = Started (under schedule), Status = Approved (under general properties)
b. Project ->Main ->Properties ->Financial, Financial Status = Open, Type = Standard, select, Company, Department and Location, select Labor Transactions Rates and Batch Cycle
(set type to Internal if External Billing is not used)
c. Team ->Staff ->add the resource created in Step 17
d. Task, create new task, select Charge Code, Save
Click Assign to select the resource to the task

Now you can create a timesheet for the resource from Step 17. Next week we'll look at the data flow from the timesheet to the finacial tables.

note: If you do not have any input type codes then you should also create some from within the Administration Tool, which are needed for transactions. A default can be specified at the resource level, especially if you timesheets do not have the input type field on the timesheet view. (Input type codes can be chargeable or not. If using external billing the input type code should be set to to chargeable.)


Enjoy!

-shawn

[System]

Great info Shawn! Thanks!

Check it out folks!

[Deactivated User]

Thanks Shawn.
There are problems every now and then a comprehensive list for checking is good to have.

Martti K.

With the flow do you mean something like this.

[Anon Anon]

Martti,

Correct on the non-labor resources. That is an open enhancement (improvement) request: CLRT-55120.

-shawn

[Anon Anon]

Very Informative tip Shawn.....Are you going to bring part II of the same which you had mentioned in it.

[Anon Anon]

Thanks for the diagram

[Deactivated User]

[Anon Anon]

Big thanks to Connie Rong Fu, one of our Senior Support Engineers for providing some additional clarification to a few items in my original post. I've edited the original and added the elaborations.

-shawn

[Deactivated User]

Just wondering again....

If you don't use companies (ie don't have any) is company actually required for financial enablement?

Secondly rather than going through the whole thing again every time you have a problem or more precisely when you want to verify if a project or a resource is finanically enabled, is there a simple test ie query to do that.

For projects there is PAC_MNT_PROJECTS.IS_FINANCIALLY_ENABLED.
For resources there is PAC_MNT_RESOURCES.ACTIVE, but when do they actually get populated?
Apparently not when all the financial fields have a value.

Thirdly there is all kinds of things which you can't do according to the manual if the user, resource and project are not financially enabled.
Many of them are not up to date.

Any chance for Financial Enablement Part II ?

Martti K.

[Legacy User]

Hi Martti,

Companies are only needed if External Billings are used, basic financial processings including Chargebacks can be done without companies

Please see KB TEC544788 for information on project IS_FINANCIALLY_ENABLED

For resources I have not seen any record in pac_mnt_resources with Active value other than 1, it may be a legacy field left there for backward compatibility only. A resource is considered financially enabled as long as department, location, resource class and transaction class are populated

Agreed that documentations should be improved :)

Connie

[Deactivated User]

Thanks Connie

Martti K.

[Rajini]

Very informative Shwan . Thank you .

I am still wonderng , how do we get actuals to display on the cost plan, is that by posting the actuals from timesheets or by posting the transactions? Do we need to populate the cost plan from resource plan for this...

Kindly advice.

Thanks and Regards,
Rajini

[Anon Anon]

Create a Cost plan from the Resource Plan.
Select Financial Plans, under Project Properties Page.
Select Cost Plans and click on “New from Resource Plan”
A new Cost Plan Create Window appears.
Enter Plan Name, Plan ID, Plan Description
Select Period Type
Select Group by and Sub_Group
On Staff Plan Copy Options, Select Assignment to build an estimate from the Staff Plan
Click Submit. Any Timesheets or Financial Transactions that were posted to Wip will display in your cost plan.
Hours will be displayed in the Units and the Actual Dollars (hours X rate) will display in the Actual Cost

[Rajini]

Thank you Chris,

I created he cost plan based on staff plan and ran the rate matrix extraction and port to financials jobs . I see the rate *hours against the "cost", assignment hours against the "units for actuals", but I am unable to see the actuals entered on the timessheet reflect any where on the cost plan.

Is there something I miss?

Thanks and Regards,
Rajini

[Deactivated User]

Did you do posting up to WIP?
My understanding is that the actuals on cost plans come from WIP.

Martti K.

[Anon Anon]

Yes, you must run the Post to WIP to display on cost plan. If for somer reason it's not showing, query the WIP table to verify the transaction occured. It could have been an invalid transaction.

[Rajini]

Thank you, After I ran post to WIP, I am able to see the actual costs.

Regards,
Rajini

[Rajini]

Is it possible to initiate transactions from timesheets?

[Anon Anon]

Transactions are initiated either by XOG, Timesheets, or creating a Transaction Entry using Voucher Expense or Voucher Other. When you query the WIP table (PPA_WIP), the column SOURCEMODULE will tell you the source of the transaction. 50=XOG, 51-Timesheets, 52-Vloucher expense, 53-voucher other. The majority of transactions for us are timesheeets.