This article describes the basics of the financial view in Meisterplan.

• Overview of the Financial View
• Remaining Budget and Benefit Target
• Entering Financial Events for a Project
• Single Project Financials
• Traffic Lights
• Hints for Traffic Lights and Columns

Overview of the Financial View

When using financial values, the financial view will be displayed in Meisterplan.

It displays costs (first three columns) and benefit (last column) entered for projects via allocations of roles and resources and financial events.

If budgets for costs and target values for the benefit have been entered for the active portfolio, those are also displayed in gray.

Like the resource view, the financial view is updated immediately with any changes made to allocations or financial events in the project view, e.g., when you move a project to another period.

• O: Operational Expenditure (directly assigned + allocation costs type OpEx) and budget
• C: Capital Expenditure (directly assigned + allocation costs type CapEx) and budget
• T: Total cost (= O + C) and budget
• B: directly assigned project benefit and target

Remaining Budget and Benefit Target

Budgets and benefit targets can be defined yearly, quarterly or monthly (see Edit Portfolio).

Depending on the zoom level, the financial periods are monthly, quarterly or yearly. The values of the budget periods will be summed up or evenly distributed accordingly to the financial periods.

Entering Financial Events for a Project

Any project costs that are not allocation costs as well as benefits must be entered as financial events for the corresponding project in the Edit Project window:

For details, see the Adding and Editing Financial Events section of the Edit Project Window article.

Single Project Financials

• Select a project to highlight its costs and benefit in the financial view.
• Hover over a column segment to display a hint with the associated figures (cost/benefit value and budget/target).
• If a project's financial events use finance categories, individual figures per category will also be shown in the hint.

Traffic Lights

When you collapse the Financials view, it will be reduced to a single row of Traffic Lights:

These traffic lights display whether costs and benefit are in or over budget or target value.

• A Red Costs Light indicates costs are over budget.
• A Green Costs Light indicates costs are in budget.
• A Gray Costs Light indicates no budget has been defined.
• A Red Benefit Light indicates benefit is under target value. If no target benefits have been defined, a red benefit light indicates benefit is under total costs.
• A Green Benefit Light indicates benefit is on or over target value. If no target benefits have been defined, a green benefit light indicates benefit is greater than or equal to total costs.
• A Gray Benefit Light indicates no target benefit has been defined for the associated period. Gray benefit lights will only be displayed if a target benefit has been entered for at least one period.

While the actual figures are not displayed in this mode, the hints displayed when hovering over traffic lights display a summary of costs or benefit in the corresponding periods.

Hints for Traffic Lights and Columns

The traffic light hints summarize costs and benefit in the corresponding period:

So do the column hints:

When your zoom level is less detailed than your budget or target benefit plan, the hint also displays that the budget or target benefit is summed up:

Please note that the beginning of your fiscal year may differ from the beginning of the calendar year. Hints for financial figures will display the fiscal year defined in your portfolio, not the calendar year.