for JD Edwards World and EnterpriseOne

Transcription

1 for JD Edwards World and EnterpriseOne Version 1.0 Last Updated: August 31, 2011

2 Contents Best Practices for Usage of Insight Budgeting... 1 Version Summer Introduction Primary Objective Recommended Project Team Scale Scope What is Success? Activities and Cycles Budget Activities... 5 Recommended Budget Activities & Cycles Budget Participants Budget Scopes Input Forms Budget Repository Management Central Report Storage and Modeling Change Tracking... 9 Further Information Contacts Technical Support Notices and Disclaimer Page 2 of 10

3 1.1 Primary Objective All successful organizations require a budgeting process to ensure that certain fiscal goals and objectives are achieved. Insight s Budgeting Module is an effective tool that manages budgetary workflow and yields immediate results for critical feedback information, without any data warehousing. Proper budgeting requires that organizational departments own their budget and, therefore, their specific input is vital. Spreadsheet modeling is often complicated and intricate; many organizations struggle to keep information consistent, up to date and under control. The Insight Budgeting Module will enable certain modeling functionality that will reign in the process of JDE Exportation. A proper budget implementation should centralize all information and provide a complete circle of information, starting with the original budget and ending with updated forecasts and projections throughout the year that are continuously compared to actual results. A single-source, information loop, is instrumental to a successful organization. 1.2 Recommended Project Team In any software implementation, at the onset it is important to identify key personnel and their role within the project. For each person involved, agree upon the best method of contact. This may be directly or via another person involved in the project. Typically a software project will have the following participants: Project Sponsor (Client) - The financial sponsor of the project, this is the person with the final authority to alter project estimates and timelines Project Manager (Client) Person responsible for coordinating the various functional and technical requirements, as well as delivering the project within time and budget constraints User Representatives (Client) People in the different groups who will be using the product and whose role is to coordinate and prioritize requests from individual users. Technical Representatives (Client) - Staff from the client s IT function will administer user and account settings, as well as determine how Insight Budgeting will sit within the organization s IT infrastructure Insight Account Manager - The Insight Account Manager is the primary contact for any matters relating to software sales, contracts and payments Insight Project Coordinator / Product Specialist - For large scale rollouts, Insight will typically assign a project coordinator to oversee the implementation and ensure availability of Insight s training and technical staff as appropriate Insight Trainer - A key step of implementation, an Insight Trainer will provide training to both System Administrator(s) and Application Users Page 3 of 10

4 1.3 Scale Even without precise numbers, it is important early on that there is a general understanding about the approximate scale of the implementation. A rollout to 1000 users in 40 different countries needs to be handled very differently than a rollout involving 10 users in a single office. 1.4 Scope Is the project going to include a rollout of multiple activities or just a single budget environment? Who will participate? Is the rollout to coincide with a financial reporting calendar? Will budget information be uploaded to JDE? Is Insight Budgeting to be rolled out alongside a new forecasting implementation? If so, this should be recognized early on as this creates extra project dependencies and potential risks. If the purpose of the rollout is to replace an existing reporting tool or Business Intelligence system, then the implementation needs to include an analysis of the existing system and refactoring of the key reports. 1.5 What is Success? It is important at the onset that the key personnel involved in the project can agree on what will constitute a successful outcome. To be effective, success criteria need to be clear, specific and measurable. An example might be: We will have rolled out Insight Budgeting to the 7 European regional offices and provided training for all users by September 30 th this year. Page 4 of 10

5 2.1 Budget Activities Budgeting activities are maintained for specific purposes and participants. A typical budget activity may consist of many participants, multiple cycles, forms, and scopes. Cycles can be opened and closed based on requirements. Budget activities should be made as generic as possible so that it s easy to recycle them every year. Recommended Budget Activities & Cycles Budgeting o Budget Entry Forecasting o Q2 Forecast Entry o Q3 Forecast Entry o Q4 Forecast Entry Statistics & Other o Consolidation Entry o Statistic Entry TIP: Activity & Cycle descriptions should identify the original creator and due date in order to make it easy to identify responsible parties and deadlines. 2.2 Budget Participants There are 4* types of Budgeting Participants. Supervisor: Typically an IT representative, this person oversees an entire budget activity Controller: Typically a Financial Controller, this person oversees the budget activity and is responsible for uploading to JDE. This person should also be designated as the one to open and close budget cycles Approver: Typically a department manager or controller, this person is responsible for specific individuals and approving or rejecting their contributions Contributor: Typically a department manager or analyst, this person is responsible for budget submissions to Insight custom ledgers *Non-Insight Budget Users: Typically operations personnel, these users are not responsible for budget submission or approvals, but utilize budget information for reporting and ad-hoc inquiries Page 5 of 10

6 A contributor s submissions can only be approved once using Insight s Cycle Status Work Flow management functionality. If multiple approvals are required, it is suggested that the input/review forms utilize specific comment columns for each approval layer. After comments are approved, the designated Approver should certify the contributions by approving the entire form. Insight custom ledgers should be uploaded to JDE by the designated Insight Budget Controller so that this information can be utilized by Non-Insight Budgeting Participants. Budgeting Participant Roles are assigned for each budgeting activity. As such, if certain individuals or groups of individuals are meant to be controlled separately, then separate budgeting activities should be established for each group (i.e. if you want a budget activity open to some individuals, but not all.) 2.3 Budget Scopes Budget scopes control whether or not an individual can enter budget data into an Insight input form. Before implementing scopes, consideration should be made about whether or not JDE security can be implemented to restrict available information from appearing in a users form. If the budget forms are designed for a console user(s), you may be able to get by with just limiting available information on the form. If security or custom forms are not an option, scopes should be defined to restrict budget input capabilities. Excerpt from Summer 2011-Insight Best Practice Guide: Additional Security Configuration for JD Edwards ERP systems Insight supports both inclusive and exclusive JDE security based on company, business unit, business unit category codes, object account and object account category codes. Using JDE security allows different users to view the same inquiry but with each only seeing the information that is relevant to them. Additional security settings are available for the Human Resources (HR) and Payroll (PR) modules. In addition to reading the aforementioned JDE security, field level security can be set at the individual and group level. For example you can choose to hide salary, social security, or other key information from any groups of users for all HR and PR reports. There are 2 types of Budgeting scopes: Participant Scope: Assigned for a specific budget contributor of a particular activity. Ex) Debbie is responsible only for budgeting Product Revenue, therefore her scope is equal to the object account range for product revenue, 5002:5004. Cycle Scope: Assigned to an entire cycle within an activity. For example, a mid-year budget revision cycle might restrict periods 1-6 so that no changes are made to actual (AA) plan amounts that are recorded to the custom ledger for reaming year budget and forecasting activity. TIP: Within each scope is the ability to restrict input cells so that they are only updated through Apply Model functionality. Utilize this feature to ensure that model results imported into Insight are not accidentally overwritten by users. Page 6 of 10

7 2.4 Input Forms It is easy to manage a budget form that is simple and straightforward for all users to understand. At a minimum, all input forms must embed business unit, object account and subsidiary detail. The simplest design is a trial balance with periods 1-12 in separate columns and a YT12 period to summarize the total amount of each row item entered. Separate forms can be constructed and linked to the input form for easy review. With Insight, users can input budget and forecast information directly into an income statement hierarchy, but this adds additional complication that may not be necessary. Some companies choose to budget at a summary level; this can be done by utilizing hierarchy functionality to roll up certain accounts into a summary line item. Insight s best practice recommendation is to not budget at the summary level, rather budget at the lowest level. This low-level budgeting makes it easier to compare actual results to budget during the year end. Plan to utilize consistent forms and standard reporting features across your enterprise; this means you make sure that your budgetary object accounts exist and instruct users to budget to only the accounts that are available on the input forms. Utilize Insight Reporting to streamline your accounts, category and other codes to ensure proper data integrity during your budget process. This will ensure consistent budgeting throughout. Remember to check that all posting edit codes are consistent and correct. Lastly, utilize the natural accounting sign of your budget accounts. This will result in less confusion for all users, e.g. revenue input should be entered as a credit and expenses entered as debits. Tip: Remind budget participants to utilize Favorite functionality to quickly and easily identify budget reports for their use. Page 7 of 10

8 3.1 Central Report Storage and Modeling Insight s Excel Integration requires that all Excel workbooks be stored in the Insight Repository in order to utilize the apply model functionality, away from any local workstations. This is consistent with the message that Insight centralizes all budget information. Information that is not integrated through Excel modeling but is necessary to the budget should also be stored in an excel workbook and uploaded into Insight for safe keeping and auditability. There is a recommended budget folder for storing these files that should be implemented and communicated to all budget participants at the Document level. Documents: Budget Excel Models Scenarios Scenario Scenario Scenario Spread Methodologies Prior Year Spread Straight line Spread Quarterly Spread Revenue Spread Confidential Modeling HC & Payroll Capital Expenditure Modeling CapEx Excel Workbook Miscellaneous Tip: Name the modeling.xls form the same as the.rdf inquiry stored in Insight Tip: For.rdf inquires that utilize apply model functionality, include the name of the.xls model to be applied in the activated title and also include any other instructions that might be necessary. Tip: Utilize pre-existing Insight Excel workbook models by inserting a tab worksheet into position 1, this tab being the one that communicates back and forth with Insight. It is recommended that this worksheet be a simple trial balance for BU/OBJ/SUB, without any totaling turned on. Reference the remaining worksheet tabs in the workbook to the first tab for complete modeling implementation and feedback to Insight custom ledgers. Page 8 of 10

9 3.2 Change Tracking Most budget cycles require management of different passes or phases of budget contributions (e.g., Pre-Board Budget, Budget with Recommended Board Adjustments, Final Budget). The Insight best practice recommendation is to upload these different budget phases into unique JDE ledgers for 2 reasons: 1) so that the Insight budget activity need only designate one custom ledger and 2) budget input forms do not require updating for each unique budget phase. At the end of each phase, the Insight custom ledger can be uploaded into JDE and all reporting can be based on either the JDE or Insight Custom ledgers. This best enables reporting for all changes and iterations of a budget environment. Tip: Utilize the Balances Batch Upload (F0902Z1) Template in the GL Module to review and validate the data uploaded from the Insight Repository to the z-table in JDE. After validation, complete the upload procedures as prescribed in your JDE documentation. Further, utilize the Query Budget Data Submission functionality to review all data that is stored within the repository. NOTE: There is no Z table upload in World A7.3 (A9.0 does have this). World A7.3 installations can leverage Insight for the entire budget process but will need to use the PC Budget Upload function in World to upload contributions. Insight has customers who have created custom RPG to automate this process and they have been willing to share this RPG code. Tip: The Query Budget Data Submission functionality (icon) can only be added to the custom Quick Access Tool Bar. It can be found in the Commands Not On Ribbon group of items. 3.3 Routine Backup Process Consider daily backups of the Insight repository if significant changes are being made on a frequent basis. It s much easier to restore from an Insight backup than it is to restore from a full nightly tape backup of your entire database. A routine backup process cannot be scheduled, so designate a responsible party to perform this function. Remember to save the backup files to a network location that is included with your regular disaster recovery services. Page 9 of 10

10 Contacts For more information regarding our products, please contact us at: Web Technical Support For Technical Support, Please access the customer support center: Web Link Notices and Disclaimer Insight, Console, Reconciler and GL Inquiry are trademarks of InsightSoftware.com Limited. InsightSoftware.com is a registered trademark of InsightSoftware.com Limited. Oracle, JD Edwards, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, JD Edwards World and Oracle E-Business are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. The information contained in this document represents the current view of InsightSoftware.com on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. InsightSoftware.com cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication. This document is for informational purposes only. InsightSoftware.com makes no warranties, expressed or implied, in this document InsightSoftware.com Limited. All rights reserved. Page 10 of 10