The first component you configuration in Cost Transparency is the Cost Source component. The Cost Source component provides insights into IT spending at the account, cost pool, and cost center levels, including budget variance reports against plan.
Common source systems
Some common source systems for Cost Source data are:
- Cognos
- Lawson
- Oracle Financials
- PeopleSoft
- SAP
Cost source data typically comes from a finance or account liaison to the IT organization.
Questions to consider
As you begin researching your Cost Source data, here are some questions to consider:
- How are you going to segregate your IT costs in your GL?
- Are you including all IT costs in this project or just a subset? If it's just a subset, how will you differentiate those line items?
- Do you have one consolidated GL or do you have multiple GLs?
- How will your differentiate your OpEx and CapEx transactions?
- How many cost centers do you have?
- How are those costs associated to accounts?
- How large is your GL file based on your project timeline?
- Do you have contacts in mind for requesting the required data?
- Do you anticipate any struggles with acquiring the data?
- How clean is your data?
These are all questions your project and Success Management team will want to know as you look at extracting the data from your source system and loading it into Apptio.
Required columns
The table below lists the data sets and specific data elements from those data sets that are required. There are many other data elements you may wish to include. Please refer to your Configuration Workbook for more details on all data elements.
Required data sets | Required data elements |
General Ledger (OpEx and CapEx) Use this data set as the basis of your cost source actuals information | - Account Code
- Amount
- Cost Center
- Expense Type (OpEx or CapEx)
- Journal ID
- Journal Description
- Project Code (if the Projects component is used)
- Vendor Code
|
Budget (OpEx and CapEx) Use this data set as the basis of your cost source budget information | - Account Code
- Amount
- Cost Center
- Expense Type (OpEx or CapEx)
- Project Code (if using the Projects component)
- Vendor Code
|
List of Cost Centers Use this data set to identify characteristics about a cost center and to link to the provided GL and budget data based on cost center | - Cost Center Code
- Cost Center Name
- Cost Center Owner
|
Chart of Accounts Use this data set to identify key items that will link to the provided GL and budget based on account code | - Account Code
- Account Description
- Fixed or Variable
|
Account Code to Cost Pool Mapping Use this data set to map your account codes to cost pools and sub-pools defined in ATUM (Apptio's TBM Unified Model) | - Account Code
- Cost Pool
- Cost Sub-Pool
|
Cost Source Identifier
You will also need to decide on the level of granularity of the data you wish to load into Apptio. For Cost Source identifier, the following data elements combined together define the level of uniqueness:
- Cost Pool
- Cost Sub-Pool
- Account
- Cost Center
- Project ID (if using the Projects component)
- Vendor ID
- Fixed/Variable
- Expense Type
In addition, you can add an additional column to add another layer of granularity as needed using the UID Metafield.
Columns Required To Link Data Sets
You will also need to consider the ways in which you'll link the Cost Source Master Data set to other Master Data sets. The table below highlights some specific data elements needed for linking data sets together.
Link to Master Data Set | Required data elements |
Labor Master Data | - Cost Pool
- Cost Sub-Pool
- Cost Center
- Labor Key Metafield
|
Fixed Asset Master Data | Since there are a variety of mapping methods, the key is created using the Fixed Asset Key Metafield. The columns below represent some examples you may want to use. - Cost Center && Cost Pool && Cost Sub-Pool
- Cost Center
- Cost Pool && Cost Sub-Pool
- Cost Center && Account Code
|
Vendors Master Data | - Vendor ID
- Vendor Key Metafield
|
Other Cost Pools | - Cost Center
- Other Cost Pool Metafield
|