Total cost, cost variance on cost plan increased suddenly while there are no ETC

Products

• Clarity PPM On Premise
• Clarity PPM SaaS

Issue/Introduction

Cost plans now show an increase in planned costs for prior periods.  There is no ETC, why did the costs increase?

Environment

Release : All

Component : CA PPM FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

Cause

When populating cost plans, prior periods looks at the actual quantity + ETC (if applicable) multiplied by the current rate in the matrix.

if a resource changed location, department, transaction class, resource class, role etc and the matrix is set to  use any of these their rate  for prior period could very well change.

The "New from Task Assignment" feature work as follows:
For every Cost Detail ‘Planned Cost’ in past periods, the data comes from the Actuals (taken
from the actual assignment) and the Rate Matrix Cost. Therefore, the Cost Rate
posted via the actual transaction is ignored.    If WIP has negative units the assignment actuals will show 0 and there will be $0 cost for past periods.

The populate feature will populate the ‘Planned Units’ from the (ETC+Actual) Units and the ‘Planned Cost’ come from the planned units multiplied by the matching row in the live rate matrix. (It will not involve the actual cost for the ‘planned cost’ calculation)
The ‘Actual Units’ and ‘Actual Costs’ come directly from the WIP Transaction that has been posted.
Therefore, the ‘Actual Cost’ may be different than the ‘Planned Cost’

Example:
Rate Matrix is configured with $100 Rate, but actual transactions may use a different rate
Actual Units = 8 hours (1 day)
Actual Cost = (8 x 200) = 1,600
Remaining ETC = 16 hours (2 days)
Actual Cost comes directly from posted WIP transaction

Cost Plan calculations
Planned Units = 16 + 8 = 24 hours (2 days remaining in ETC, 1 day posted as actuals = 3 days)
Planned Cost = (24 x 100) = 2,400 (using rate from matrix).  

Screenshots Below:
1 - Rate Matrix Row
2 - Task Assignment
3 - Actual Transction Posted into WIP
4 - Cost Plan Population by Assignment

 

Actual Units = 8 hours (1 day)
Actual Cost = (8 x 200) = 1,600
Remaining ETC = 16 hours (2 days)
Actual Cost comes directly from posted WIP transaction

Cost Plan calculations
Planned Units = 16 + 8 = 24 hours (2 days remaining in ETC, 1 day posted as actuals = 3 days)
Planned Cost = (24 x 100) = 2,400 (using rate from matrix)

Screenshots Below:
1 - Rate Matrix Row
2 - Task Assignment
3 - Actual Transction Posted into WIP
4 - Cost Plan Population by Assignment

 

Note:
Actuals are considered to be in the past, and calculated as explained above, if the date of posting exists outside of the current fiscal period for the current system date, even if they are chronologically in the past. This can lead to planned cost discrepancies between cost plans if they use a different period type (especially quarterly/annual versus 13 period/monthly .

Resolution

This is working as designed.

2 options may be to manually update the cost plan for prior periods to match the actual cost or perhaps create a process to do this.

For additional information reference: 

https://community.broadcom.com/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?MID=719192#bm741157fe-e529-4130-84aa-2839dc3a7ea8