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Financial Operations
Departmental Financial Planning
Introduction

Contents
Overview
What is a Plan Version?
Set User Parameters for the MIT Planning Layout
Options for Creating a Plan

Overview

MIT departments can use SAP's planning component for their financial planning. Some knowledge of fiscal years and the accounting terminology used in SAP will be necessary. See the Glossary for definitions of terms.

Planning vs. Budgeting

Planning and budgeting are essentially similar processes. They both involve allocating a fixed amount of money to meet operational expenses over a given period of time. At MIT, the main difference between a plan and a budget is that a plan is strictly a tool for departmental use, whereas a budget is the official spending plan. The official MIT budget is stored in SAP in a special plan version: plan version 0 approved by the Office of Budgets and Financial Planning (OBFP) or the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP).

Planning in SAP

SAP's planning component offers a planning tool for MIT departments and areas. Departmental plan amounts are manually entered by the department. Since SAP places no built-in restrictions on the amounts entered, departmental planners are responsible for the accuracy of the numbers in their plans. Planners are also responsible for calculating Employee Benefits and Facilities and Administrative (F&A) Cost Rates and entering these amounts in their plans. The SAP planning module does not automatically calculate these costs.

Why Do Planning in SAP?

One advantage to planning in SAP is the ability to run SAP reports on your planning data in addition to the Institute budget. You can update your plan at any time and run new reports on it.

For projects, the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) feeds authorized totals into one cost element of each WBS element. The OSP feed populates cost element 400000 Summary Posting for Systems with the total amount for the WBS element. If you want to do planning for this WBS element at a finer level of detail, you can divide the total over different cost elements.

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What is a Plan Version?

There are 38 different plan versions. Each plan version, except plan version 0, serves a distinct departmental planning area. For example, plan version H00 is used by all departments in the School of Humanities and Social Science. Authorized users for a plan version can create, change, or view planning data within their plan version only. This data is not accessible to users authorized in different plan versions.

Plan version 0 contains the MIT official budget. This plan version is only updated by computer feeds from OSP and OBFP, i.e. no one can manually change data in plan version 0.

For departments, a plan version name contains 3 characters: one letter and two numbers. For example, the plan version for the School of Science is S00. The exceptions to this rule are plan version 0, 1, 2, the Sloan School (99), the School of Engineering Administrative Services Organization (100), and System Data Maintenance (900).

Plan Versions

Plan Version

School/Area

0

Total Budget

1

Recurring (Base) Budget

2

Non-recurring (Non-base) Budget

99

Sloan School of Management

100

ASO

900

System Data Maintenance

A00

School of Architecture

C00

Office of President & Chairman

D00

VP Resource Development

E00

School of Engineering

F00

VP Finance

H00

School of HASS

I00

VP Information Systems

L00

Libraries

M00

School of Management

N00

Plant ver 1

N01

Plant Revision 1

N02

Plant Revision 2

N03

Plant Revision 3

N04

Plant Revision 3

N05

Plant Revision 5

N06

Plant Revision 6

N07

Plant Revision 7

N08

Plant Revision 8

N09

Plant Revision 9

P00

Provost

P11

Merrill Lynch Plan

Q00

VP for Human Resources

R00

VP & Dean for Research

S00

School of Science

T00

Treasurer

U00

Dean of Students & UG Ed.

V00

Senior Vice President

X01

Training-Instructor

X02

Training-Students

Y00

Alumni

Z75

test plan

Z76

IO test plan

Plan version 0 contains the Institute Budget for cost centers
and internal orders, and the OSP authorized totals for WBS elements.

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Set User Parameters for the MIT Planning Layout

When you begin creating a plan, check the Layout field on the Initial Screen. If the field does not read Z-DEPT PLANS, you need to set your user parameters to the MIT departmental planning layout. You only have to do this the first time you do planning. SAP defaults to the new layout for all subsequent logons.

1. From the SAP User Menu screen, follow the navigation path or use the transaction code below to access the "Planning Cost Elements/Activity Inputs Change: Initial Screen." This screen is referred to as the Initial Screen.

Navigation Path:

- User Menu
- Role ZMIT
- Planning/Budgeting
- Create/Change Plan
- WBS Elements

Transaction Code:

/ncjr2

2. From the Initial Screen, follow the menu path: Settings>>Set planner profile.

Result: The "Set Planner Profile" dialog box appears.

screen capture:  Set Planner profile window on the Mac

3. Click the matchcode matchcode (PC: matchcode pc) in the Planner profile field.

Result: The "Planner profile" window appears.

screen capture:  Planner profile window

4. Select the ZDPTPLAN option and click the Enter button Enter/accept button .

Result: The "Set Planner Profile" dialog box reappears. The Planner profile field now reads ZDPTPLAN.

5. Click the Save to User master record button.

Result: A dialog box appears, informing you that the new user parameters were saved.

6. Click the Enter button Enter/accept button.

6. Click the Enter button Enter/accept button again to return to the Initial Screen.

SAP will default to the MIT departmental planning layout for all subsequent logons with your user profile regardless of which terminal you use.

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Options for Creating a Plan

You can create a departmental plan either by using the SAP Dept. Financial Planning screens or by typing your data into a spreadsheet file. The spreadsheet method is an easier and faster way of planning for multiple fiscal years. You can enter planning data for more than one year in a spreadsheet file but only for one cost object at a time. Once you upload your file to SAP, the plan amounts are automatically distributed evenly across fiscal periods. If you need more flexibility in distributing your plan amounts or want to plan on more than one cost object at a time, use the SAP Planning screens instead.

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>>Go to Create a Plan: Part I if you are using the SAP Planning screens, or Create a Plan Using a Spreadsheet.

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