Grants Management integration point with FM-BCS

[atif_farooq]

Hi:

I am configuring Grantee management for a small portion of client that is for sponsored projects. Right now i am in the process of configuration but in the meanwhile i want conceptual clarity from FM experts that

1..what is the integration of Grantee Management with FM-BCS. In GM it has its own budgeting workbench, area for defining derivation rules, tolerance profile and AVC check . For me If budgets  for Sponsored program (sponsored projects)can be posted within GM then in what sense it is integrated with FM BCS.

2...Can budgeting be done independently in GM and FM. Please correct me ?

3..If i do not use FM-BCS for budgeting sponsored projects then can they be budgeted using GM.

Please guide me.

Regards

[waldo · Accepted solution]

Hello Atif, nice to read you

Could you please give me an example about your "sponsored projects" ? I want to understand the concept. Could you explain to me?

I cant understand how did you merge "sponsored projects" with GM ? 

[atif_farooq]

Hi:

Thanks for showing interest. Well until now i have come to know that Funds management is a solution to manage internally generated funds and Grants management is a solution to mange externally acquired funds like Grants.

In public sector organizations normally there are areas which receive various kinds of Grants from Donor/Sponsors/Grantor. Grants Management is a solution to manage these scenario without sacrificing you internal accounting process for which Funds Management fits in.
Sponsored projects can be research projects for which an Organization undergoes a sequence of process like

Grants Proposal

Grant Application

The above two encompasses Pre- Award phase of grant. There can also be other phase after Grant application which may be rejection of application by Grantor or Modification of the same.

When grant is accepted it becomes Award.Funds are received by finance department and Grants budget is posted within GM which has its own AVC and tolerance profile.

SAP Grants management covers this all process for part of your organization in order to meet sponsor reporting requirement. Moreover Grants budget can be posted in Grantor currency as well and if Grantor fiscal year is different from Grantee it can also be accounted for in it. There are so many things to tell . I hope this information will help you.

Question mentioned in my post are some confusions which i am facing , if you have any information then do let know.

Regards

[mar_novalbos]

Hi Atif

I'll try to address your questions:

1..what is the integration of Grantee Management with FM-BCS. In GM it has its own budgeting workbench, area for defining derivation rules, tolerance profile and AVC check . For me If budgets  for Sponsored program (sponsored projects)can be posted within GM then in what sense it is integrated with FM BCS.

GM gives you the 'External view' from the Sponsors perspective. Then you can see the execution based on the sponsored objects

FM-BCS will represent the 'Internal view' from your organization (based on funds centers, commitment items....and so on)

For budgeting, you can activate the FM integration per Grant Type and then specify what is the funding source (you can either first enter GM budget and then transfer to FM, which is the 'standard' scenario, or vice-versa)

This GM-FM integration is optional, it will depend on your business requirement. Just take into account that GM and FM are not the same so they cannot be understood as parallel tools, meaning that your internal view of the budget does not have to necessarily match the External view from the Sponsor.

GM availability control is independent of the FM/BCS AVC, and it controls on Grant, Fund, Sp.Program, Sp.Class and Budget Validity period, whereas BCS controls on the FM dimensions.

2...Can budgeting be done independently in GM and FM. Please correct me ?

Yes, but a customer that does not use FM still needs to implement a minimum FM, which is used only for the account derivation. In that case, the activation of FM must be configured in the way that FM is used for account derivation but not for updating. (IMG > PSM > FM Government > Actual and Commitment Update/Integration > Activate/Deactivate FM)

3..If i do not use FM-BCS for budgeting sponsored projects then can they be budgeted using GM.

Yes but that will depend on the view you need, as you can also take advantage of BCS with its budget consistency checks and availability control.

Hope this helps you

Kind regards

Mar

[atif_farooq]

Hi Mar:

Thanks for your reply, i am still not clear about about 1st point you answered. In FM we have a combination of Fund centers, commitment items and Funds and based on that we post budget in FMBB. Through derivation rules in FMDERIVE , actual commitment/consumption occurs in FI, MM, HCM e.t.c . I have not yet posted budget in GM_CREATE_BUDGET because when i enter budget in it i am getting error

Sponsored classes could not be determined; check grant.

First i need to sort this issue out why it is occurring, now suppose i have posted a budget in GM against a combination of Sponsored Class, sponsored program, Grant and Fund then and have set a derivation strategy in GMDERIVE for deriving sponsor class from cost element or commitment items, then how this Grant budget be consumed in FI transaction. Do we need to link Sponsored programs with fund center ? How will FM play its role if in Grant types i turn integration with FM on ? Please guide me with the help of scenario.

Regards

[mar_novalbos]

Hi

These are the dimensions handled by Grantee management:

When receiving grants you need to store contact information about the sponsor. The sponsor sets terms and conditions for the funding: such as the purpose and time of spending, the cash flow from sponsor to grantee, reporting rules.

1. Sponsor – Maintains the financial and administrative details such as name, contact information, fiscal year, currency, allowed grants, typically applicable funding conditions (reporting, billing, cost sharing,…).
2. Grant – stores the detailed terms and conditions of the funding and controls the management of the awarded amount in compliance with sponsor’s rules.
3. Sponsored Class – summarizes the grantees expenses and revenues according to the sponsor's categories.
4. Sponsored Program – reflects the organization’s projects or programs according to the sponsor’s categories.
5. Fund – Represents the source of funding

•External: Sponsor award amount

•Internal: Grantee’s funds and resources (i.e. cost sharing)

About Fund:

Whether you use Funds Management or not, Grants Management needs the object fund to separate sponsor‘s amounts from internal contribution to a grant. Therefore, you need to create funds and assign their FM fund type to a GM fund type. There are 3 fund types in GM:

     external (sponsor‘s share),

     internal (grantee‘s share), and

     auxiliary (to account for passthrough scenarios).

You combine FM fund types and GM fund types in the IMG> Public Sector Management> Grants Management> Grantee Management > Master Data> Fund > Maintain GM Fund Type for FM Fund Type.

Note: The F4-help for the object „fund“ offers a search by GM fund type. With that, you can easily restrict the search to external or internal funds.

Hence the Sponsored Program may represent a combination of Funds Center, Functional Area & Funded Program  in FM or a Cost Center, Order, WBS element, Functional area in CO. But you do not have to necessarily map exactly whatever you have in FM or CO into GM if it's not needed.

The Grant is available in FI, CO and FM. So, when you post to a Grant, you will consume the grant budget. Depending on your derivation rules, the system will determine an sponsored class&program, from the items subjects to be funded by a Grant and hence the Grant amount will be consumed. FM will also come into play on the FM relevant lines as well.

So, yes, in order to enter GM budget you first need to configure GMDERIVE to determine the sponsored objects to be budgeted.

Hope this helps

Cheers, Mar.

[atif_farooq]

Hi Mar:

I must say excellent explanation of GM facts. SAP standard help library is very vague on the subject matter so i am encountering issues while configuring and testing GM scenarios. Coming to your explanation regarding Funds, i want one clarification, in FM-BCS i have created three fund types which represent client internal activities . These are OPEX, CAPEX and REVENUE. Client maintains budget for capital expenditures separately and wanted to identify them so CAPEX was created and for Operating expenses budgeting OPEX fund was created, for budgeting revenue (for some scenarios no AVC check on revenue ) REVENUE has been created.

Now in GM you are saying i will have to create Funds for every Grant. E.g for Grant A i will create two funds

INTA

EXTB

which are for internal (bridge financing by client ) and external funding (from sponsors).You are saying that for budgeting in GM , Funds are must , just like in FM fund center are must.

So if i have 70 Grants i will have to create 140 Funds..Please correct me.

Regards

[paul_abrahamson_sap]

At the University of Leicester, when we implemented GM, we only set up 3 Fund Master records, RESINT (Research Internal), RESEXT (Research External), RESWIP (Research Work in Progress).

We then assigned at least two of these to every grant. RESINT for internally funded costs, RESEXT for the externally funded costs, and if a grant had a requirement for cost sharing on individual postings, these would be posted to RESWIP.

These requirements were largely driven by the UK fEC (full economic costing) requirments where external funding bodies would only pay 80% of certain sponsored classes. Certain Sponsored classes e.g Equipment had rules which required an 80% split for say the first £50,000.00 of spend on the grant and then 100% funding over 50,000. This wasn't per transaction or even per GL account, but a running total for the sponsored class.

Standard GM couldn't accommodate these splitting requirements back in 2005/6. Our GMDERIVE and FMDERIVE simply called enhancement function which looked up a splitting rule from custom tables which were maintained per grant, to control which FUND, Sponsored class and sponsored program should be derived for a certain WBS Element and gl account / cost element. We then maintained these mappings per grant in a custom developed Grant Console.

At month-end we ran a custom fund splitting program which would post journals to take the balance in RESWIP for each grant, sponsored class and sponsored programme combination per GL account and then post a 'reveral' amount to clear the WIP and split it between RESINT and RESEXT based on cost sharing rules e.g. 80% to RESEXT and 20% to RESINT.

We also developed custom Balance Sheet Adjustment routine and because we were using PS Cost Planning for internal controls, we developed a custom synchronisation utility to keep PS cost plans in sync with GM budgets for each grant.

See a blog post highlighting our usage of GM http://scn.sap.com/people/paul.abrahamson/blog/2009/04/06/using-sap-grants-management-and-project-sy...

[Former Member]

Dear Mar,

We will soon go live with grants management.

Can you please let me know how to enter the Actual opening balances for each Grant and Sponsor Class? Is there any way to do it without posting FI entries? In other words, is there any way to affect tables GMIT without posting to FI?

Thanks in advance.