Lesson 3 of 6
Planning, budgeting and availability control
10 min
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Plan, budget and availability control are three different things, and confusing them is the most common mistake in project controlling tests. The plan is the estimate of what the project will cost. The budget is the amount someone approved. Availability control (AVC) compares what the project has committed and spent with the budget, and warns or stops postings when limits are reached.
Planning
Costs can be planned on WBS elements in several ways: overall planning by year (CJ40), detailed planning by cost element (CJR2 or planning apps where your release offers them), easy cost planning with costing models, or bottom-up through network activities, whose planned work, services and materials are costed automatically. In SAP S/4HANA, plan data is stored in ACDOCP, which makes plan/actual reports work directly against the Universal Journal.
Budgeting
- Original budgetApproved amount entered per WBS element (CJ30)
- ReleasePart or all of the budget released for spending (CJ32), if the profile requires release
- Supplement or returnChanges after approval (CJ37, CJ38), each with its own document
- TransferBudget moved between WBS elements, documented
- Current budgetOriginal plus supplements minus returns plus transfers
The budget profile, assigned through the project profile, controls budgeting: overall or annual values, the time horizon, the currency, and whether and how AVC is activated. For Toledo, the steering committee approves USD 4,000,000: USD 2,600,000 on CMC-TOL-DC.1 Building, USD 1,100,000 on .2 Racking and equipment, USD 300,000 on .3 IT and commissioning (illustrative figures).
Availability control
AVC checks every posting and commitment against the budget of the budget-bearing WBS element. Assigned funds are actual costs plus commitments such as purchase orders and purchase requisitions. Tolerance limits, defined per budget profile and activity group in Customizing, say what happens at each usage percentage: a warning, a warning with an email to the person responsible, or an error that blocks the posting. AVC is activated by the budget profile, automatically when a budget is entered or in the background; CJBV activates or deactivates it for projects, and CJBN reconstructs AVC data when it is out of date.
| Usage of budget (illustrative tolerances) | Action | Toledo .2 Racking (budget USD 1,100,000) |
|---|---|---|
| 80% | Warning | At USD 880,000 assigned |
| 95% | Warning with email to the responsible person | At USD 1,045,000 assigned |
| 100% | Error: posting blocked | Above USD 1,100,000 assigned |
An illustrative tolerance set for the Toledo project.
Note what AVC counts: the purchase order counts as a commitment when it is saved, long before any invoice. That is the point: it stops the overspend at the moment of decision. It also means a test of AVC must include commitments, not only invoices.
What would you do?
After the conversion, a Toledo purchase order that should be blocked by AVC goes through without even a warning. The budget is in place and the profile has an error tolerance at 100%. What is the most likely cause?
What goes wrong in testing
| Symptom | Cause | Test |
|---|---|---|
| No AVC messages at all | AVC not activated, or activation type set to never | Check status and run CJBV for the test project |
| Wrong amounts in AVC messages | AVC data not reconstructed after conversion or budget load | Run CJBN, then compare assigned funds with a report |
| Blocking at the wrong level | Budget on a higher WBS element than designed | Test postings at each level with budget on the intended level |
| Commitments ignored | Business transaction groups not covered by tolerances | Test PR, PO, invoice and time confirmation separately |
AVC defects seen after conversions and new builds.
Budget versus plan in reporting
Project controllers read three numbers side by side: plan, budget and assigned (actual plus commitments). The difference between budget and assigned is the available amount, which is what AVC protects. A common report for this view is the budget/actual/commitment report in the project information system; Fiori analytical apps offer similar views by release. In testing, compare one report's figures with the AVC message figures for the same project. If the report says USD 210,000 is available and AVC blocks a USD 200,000 purchase order, one of them is wrong.
Converted budgets need particular care. If ECC budgets are carried over, the current budget must equal original plus supplements minus returns plus transfers, and the budget documents should still explain every change. If budgets are reloaded instead, decide which value becomes the new original budget and document that decision, because auditors will compare approvals with what the system says.
- Plan is the estimate, budget is the approval, AVC is the control.
- Budget changes are documented: original, release, supplement, return, transfer.
- AVC counts commitments and actuals against budget-bearing WBS elements.
- After conversion, activate and reconstruct AVC (CJBV, CJBN) before testing it.
Check your understanding · not graded
Lesson check
1. What does availability control compare with the budget?
2. Which transaction enters the original budget on WBS elements?
3. Where are tolerance limits for AVC defined?
4. What does CJBN do?