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Financial Section Basics

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Meisterplan
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This article describes the basics of the financial section of the Portfolio Designer view in Meisterplan.

Overview of the Financial Section

If you're using financial values, the financial section will be displayed in the Portfolio Designer view. To hide the financial section you need to delete all financial values in Meisterplan.

Portfolio Designer: Financials

Up to four figures will display the sum of costs (first three columns) and benefits (last column) of all projects in the active portfolio (project costs and benefits come from allocations of roles and resources, as well as from financial events). If cost budgets or benefit targets have been entered for the active portfolio, those will also be displayed.

You may select which financial figures to display and the scaling of cost and benefit columns in the Settings for the Portfolio Designer view (see the Portfolio Designer Settings article for details).

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

Displayed Financial Figures

The following financial figures may be displayed in the financial section:

  • O: Operational Expenditure (OpEx allocation costs and financial events) and budget
  • C: Capital Expenditure (CapEx allocation costs and financial events) and budget
  • T: Total Cost (Operational Expenditure + Capital Expenditure) and total budget
  • B: Benefit (Benefit financial events) and target

Hover over columns to display a summary of the associated figures (see the Hints for Financials article).

Click a column to display details of the associated figures (see the Finance Trace Mode article).

How Zoom Level Affects Summation

Depending on the Portfolio Designer zoom level, financial values will be summed up and displayed by month (Week zoom level), quarter (Month zoom level), or year (Quarter zoom level) in the financial section.

Cost Budgets and Benefit Targets

You may enter cost budgets and benefit targets per month, quarter or year for each portfolio in the associated settings (see the Edit Portfolio article).

  • Cost Budgets will be displayed in gray as long as costs are in budget.
    • Costs in Budget will be displayed in green.
    • Costs over Budget will be displayed in red.
  • Benefit Targets will be displayed in gray as long as they have not been reached.
    • Benefit under Target will be displayed in red. 
    • Benefit at or over Target will be displayed in green. Once the target has been reached, it will be displayed as a horizontal black line.

In Portfolios without any cost budgets or benefit targets:

  • Cost columns will always be red.
  • Benefit columns will be red when the total benefit is lower than the total costs.
  • Benefit columns will be green when the total benefit is higher than the total costs.

Cost budgets and benefit targets can be defined per month, quarter or year (see the Edit Portfolio article). Depending on the zoom level, however, Meisterplan may sum up those cost budget and benefit target values for display in the financial section (see the How Zoom Level Affects Summation section):

  • If the displayed period is longer than the planning period, cost budgets and benefit targets will be summed up.
  • If the displayed period is equal to the planning period, cost budgets and benefit targets will be displayed as planned.
  • If the displayed period is shorter than the planning period, remaining cost budgets and benefit targets will be distributed equally to the displayed 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.

Financials for Selected Projects

  • Select one or more projects to highlight their costs and benefit in the financial section.
  • 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 financial section, it will be reduced to a single row of traffic lights.

These traffic lights display whether costs are in or over budget and whether benefit targets have been reached:

  • 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 benefit targets 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 benefit targets have been defined, a green benefit light indicates that the benefit is greater than or equal to the total costs.
  • A Gray Benefit Light indicates no benefit target has been defined for the associated period. Gray benefit lights will only be displayed if a benefit target has been entered for at least one period.

While the actual figures will not be visualized in this mode, the hints displayed when hovering over traffic lights display a summary of costs or benefit in the corresponding periods (see the Hints for Financials article).

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