Payment Planner Functional Description

Functional Description 

Feature Overview:   

1. Payment Planner Administration Configuration - allows the system manager to create standard business Payment Plans that can then be selected by the project manager to use on their project. 

2. Payment Planner Project - The Payment Planner functionality enables the Project Manager to link a single or multiple Payment Plan(s) with the project. 

3. Payment Planner Gantt - The project manager can decide how the payment plan for their project is configured, a manual payment can be entered or you can import costs from the project schedule by task or by the distributed costs using the distribution curve. Any modifications with the Gantt data is reflected as a difference in the payment planner grid and are highlighted. The data can then be synched to maintain consistency. 

4. Payment Planner Invoicing- This functionality gives the Project Manager the ability to group payment planner lines to be included in an invoice. The functionality allows multiple invoices to be allocated to a project and enables the PM to have the costs incurred on a project Gannt to be summarised easily for inclusion in an invoice. 

5. Payment Planner Advanced Forecasting - Through the notification process the payment plan for a project is linked with Project Forecasting. This functionality enables the data on project costs, projected revenue (invoices) and project cashflow (billings) to be integrated with the PPM Project Forecasting. 

6. Payment Planner ERP Invoice Data Outbound - API functionality allows the invoice data to be sent to an ERP system for the invoice to be generated. 

7. Payment Planner ERP Invoice Data Inbound - API functionality allows the return of data so the ERP system can send notifications on invoice issued, invoiced paid or invoice in dispute back to PPM. 

Business Context: 

Application Functionality: 

1 Payment Planner Administration Configuration 

The Administration | Configuration | Payment Plans function is designed to provide the administrator with the ability to configure standard business payment plans. These plans can then be selected by the project manager to use on their project. Payment Planner is where projected costs, billing and revenue for a project can be managed. Data managed in this area will be surfaced in the Advanced Forecasting area of the system. 

The Payment Plan is made up of four sections of data. 

• Section 1 : Payment Plan Invoice Line 

• Section 2 : Payment Plan Invoice Summary 

• Section 3 : Payment Plan Project Overall 

• Section 4 : Payment Plan Project Variables 

Each section provides the administrator with the ability to configure a field using one of three sources of data: 

1. Default System Field which are common across all payment plans. 

2. Calculated Linked data fields that can use a wide range of system fields to generate a required result. These are administrator configurable fields linked to Gantt or Work Order fields (system configurable). 

3. Bespoke data fields specific to the payment plan of multiple type attributes and can have user defined formulas. 

The four sections are designed to capture the data required for producing an invoice and to track the overall project invoicing totals. 

1.1 Data Section 1: Payment Plan Invoice line  

This section is where the fields that will be used within an Invoice for the Invoice Line Details are configured. 

The source of data is the Gantt, and the grouping of the data can be presented in three ways depending on the payment plan. 

1. Group 1: Task, Work-Order, Pay-Plan Date (will default to the finish-date of the Task on import). 

2. Group 2: Work-Order, Sub-Account-Group, Pay-Plan Date (will default to the current period end-date). 

3. Group 3: Invoice Receiver ID, Sub-Account-Group, Pay-Plan Date (will default to the current period end-date). 

Note: If the work-order functionality is not enabled than the Work-Order functionality is not available. 

The administrator configures the data-fields that will appear in this Section. 

1.2 Data Section 2: Payment Plan Invoice Summary 

This section is where the invoice specific total data fields are configured, these fields are used by the payment planner invoice summary modal. The administrator can create a specific field that is linked to a numeric field of section 1, and enables the display the total-value for all section 1 lines selected to be invoiced. This is achieved by selecting a numeric field from section 1 as the source via the calculation field formula and select the field type attribute of summarised. The administrator can configure specific fields for this section. The fields configured in this section are used in the INVOICE function of Payment Planner. 

Field Attributes: same as the field attributes described above. 

Field Type Attributes: 

Payment Plan Section: select section that the field is associated with, in the payment plan. This is a drop-down list of the four sections. 

Type: select from drop-down list the type of field. For system fields this is GREYED-OUT. 

• Text 

• Calculated Field 

• Date 

• Linked Field 

• Numeric 

• Single Select Custom List 

• Yes/No 

Depending on the field type select the PM is prompted for additional data. The field Attributes can be viewed below. 

Field Type – Text  

Field Type - Calculated Field 

Field Type – Date 

2 Payment Planner Project  

The Payment Planner modal has several functional sections: 

• Assign Payment Plans to a project 

• Project Variables 

• Documents 

• Import from Schedule 

• Sync with Schedule 

• Load to Registers 

• Delete 

• Invoice 

• Close 

• Sync with Budget 

• Exit 

• Payment Plan Grid 

• 
  

2.1 Assigning Payment Plans to a Project  

Payment Planner allows the Project Manager to link a single or multiple Payment Plan(s) with the project. The project manager can decide how the payment plan for their project is gathered, a manual payment can be entered or the PM can import costs from the project schedule by task or by the distributed costs using the distribution curve. 

On selecting Payment Planner from the drop-down project dash-board you are presented with the following modal. 

To add a Payment Plan, click on ADD at the top of the screen. 

Clicking on ADD redirects the user to the “Payment Plan Details” pop-up tab. 

Click on the drop-down arrow of the right of the Please select a Payment Plan Type and you will be presented with a drop-down list of the available payment plans set-up by the system administrator. 

If the payment plan selected is already active for that project you are then prompted to enter the Change Request ID, this provides the link to the Baseline Change Control register for the project so that the invoices costs, revenue and billings to be issued for this change request are treated differently to the original payment plan for the project. 

Selecting a pre-configured Payment Plan from the list and clicking Save will result in the selected Payment Plan becoming visible on the dashboard, as per the screenshot above.  

Clicking on the hyperlink for the Payment Plan will take you to the Payment Plan screen, where a blank Payment Plan is visible, with a Payment Plan tab and a Project Summary tab. 

When adding a Payment Plan, the fields configured in the payment plan for each section will be displayed. These fields are organised into four sections: 

• Section 1, which will be displayed in the main Payment Planner grid. 

• Section 2, which will be displayed in the INVOICE modal. 

• Section 3, which will be display in the Project Summary modal. 

• Section 4, which will be displayed on the Project Variables Page. 

• 
  

2.2 Project Variables  

When entering the Payment Planner - Project Payment Plan modal for the first time a number of the menu options are greyed out. The reason for this is that the PM must first select the PROJECT VARIABLES menu option from the top of the grid-menu-bar. 

On clicking on the PROJECT VARIABLES the user is presented with the project variables pop-up box. 

In this pop-up the fields configured by the system administrator as SECTION 4 project variables are displayed and the project default values are entered. This enables the PM to set the standard rates that will be used in the fields calculations of the other three DATA SECTIONS. There must be a least one project variable set in the section 4 and if not used, this field can be set by the PM to ZERO. 

Sample Project Variables are: 

• Project Margin % 

• Project Withheld % 

• Maximum Amount Withheld 

The user enters the default values and selects the SAVE button. 

The Project Payment Plan modal is then refreshed and several menu options are now available for selection. 

On the top of the grid menu bar the following are now available for selection: 

• DOCUMENTS 

• PROJECT VARIABLES 

• SYNC WITH SCHEDULE 

• IMPORT FROM SCHEDULE 

On the bottom of the modal menu bar the following are now available for selection. 

• LOAD TO REGISTERS 

• DELETE 

• INVOICE (still greyed out - will only become visible when a payment line status changes from “Pending”). 

• CLOSE (still greyed out - will only become visible when all payment line items are invoiced). 

• SYNC WITH BUDGET 

• EXIT 

2.3 DOCUMENTS 

On selecting DOCUMENTS from the menu bar you are presented with the following modal. 

This document modal provides the PM with the ability to upload and store documents against the project payment plan. 

The use of the DOCUMENT model is outlined in the USER GUIDE for DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT. 

2.4 Import From Schedule  

On selecting IMPORT FROM SCHEDULE from the menu bar you are presented with the following modal. 

The tasks from the Project Gantt are displayed in this selection grid. 

Click on the TICK-BOX to select the TASK line you wish to import into the Payment Planner. 

Import Logic Rules 

• The source of data that is displayed in the IMPORT modal is from the Gantt. 

• A TASK is imported first and then data is kept consistent by the SYNC functionality. 

• If you select a child TASK all ancestors are GREYED out from selection and only import the planned resource costs from the CHILD selected. 

• If you select a PARENT then all its ancestors and its descendants are GREYED OUT from selection and only import the values from the PARENT selected, which is a summary of the planned resource costs values of all the children including the specific planned resource costs of the parent. 

• IF Costs by Period enabled a task on the Gantt will be imported with the totals of cost fields imported based on the distribution curves of the planned resources of the TASK. A TASK period cost will not be imported if the task has ZERO planned resources assigned for that period. 

• IF Costs by Period disabled a task on the Gantt will be imported with the totals of costs fields for that task imported. 

• It is recommended that you do not allocate planned resources at parent levels. If you have a requirement to allocate planned resources at parent levels, create a TASK under the parent level and allocate your planned resources to this task. 

• If using the Rate Matric functionality, if the Gantt is displaying the icon on the task to indicate that the planned resources of that task has a period where the rate matrix value is not set for that period, that period cost will not be imported into the payment planner grid. 

2.5 Sync With Schedule  

When you enter the Payment Plan for a project after importing the following modal is displayed which will display the breakdown of tasks that have been already imported. If changes have been made on the Gantt to tasks that have already been imported the payment planner grid line will display in PINK and text in RED to indicate that the payment plan data and the Gantt data are out of sync. If you hover with the mouse over the PINK BOX a tool-tip message of “This value is outdated and should be synched with schedule”. 

On selecting SYNC WITH SCHEDULE from the menu bar, the data in the GRID is synched with the Gantt and the GRID data is refreshed. 

The following changes on the Gantt will be detected by the SYNC check. 

• Changes to cost or distribution curves for the task planned resources 

• Movement of a task 

• Deletion of a task 

• Change of date on the task 

• Change to Milestone details of a task 

2.6 LOAD TO REGISTERS 

The load to registers functionality enables the transfer of data from the payment planner into Project Forecasting Advanced via the Aggregate Register functionality within PPM. The steps to configure are: 

• Load Notification Register set-up. 

• Aggregate Register set-up. 

• Line Payment Planner with Register configuration. 

• Load to Registers. 

2.6.1 Load Notification Register set-up. 

This register can only be set up by the system administrator. 

Go to ADMINISTRATION | CONFIGURATION | PROJECT REGISTERS modal. 

Select the ADD button to add a new register. 

Name: enter the name e.g. Payment Plan Register for Load Notification Step 

Type: select Standard 

Click SAVE to create the register 

On completing the SAVE the FIELDS tab on the top is now enabled and can be selected. 

On clicking the FIELDS tab icon the following modal is displayed: 

The standard system generated register fields are automatically created. 

You now add the three fields that are used to transfer values from Payment Planner to Project Forecasting. 

• Planned Cost 

• Planned Revenue 

• Planned Billing 

2.6.2 Aggregate Register set-up. 

This register can only be set up by the system administrator. 

Go to ADMINISTRATION | CONFIGURATION | PROJECT REGISTERS modal. 

Select the ADD button to add a new register. 

Name: enter the name e.g. Payment Plan Aggregation 

Type: select Standard 

Parent Register: select the register created in section 2.6.1 

e.g. Payment Plan Register for Load Notification Step 

Click SAVE to create the register 

On completing the SAVE the FIELDS tab on the top is now enabled and can be selected. 

On clicking the FIELDS tab icon the following modal is displayed: 

The standard system generated register fields are automatically created. 

You now add the three fields that are used to transfer values from Payment Planner to Project Forecasting. 

• Cost Total 

• Revenue Total 

• Billing Total