Negative Quantity Transaction Entry/Manual Transactions

Products

Clarity PPM On Premise Clarity PPM SaaS

Issue/Introduction

Can negative quantity transactions be entered from either
1. Home > Financial Management > Transaction Entry' page or
2. XOG?

Yes, negative quantity transactions can be entered.
Can they be fixed? Yes.

When negative transactions are entered, by either entering a negative quantity and/or a negative cost/rate, an out-of-sync situation occurs.
This is due to backposting back to the project-side from the financial WIP side from running the Import Financial Actuals job.
This can occur for both labor and non-labor transactions.

There are two sides in which a transaction can exist. It can exist on the project management side and also on the financial side of Clarity.

When XOG or manual transactions are entered, they are processed by the Post-to-WIP job, which posts the transaction to the financial side of Clarity, i.e. to the PPA_WIP/PPA_WIP_VALUES tables.

The project side will not have this updated information until the Import Financial Actuals job processes the transaction, which synchronizes the financial side actual units and actual cost (PPA_WIP table) to the project side (PRASSIGNMENT table).

Resolution

The typical way to correct an initial transaction is by adjusting the transaction using the below steps:

In Classic Clarity go to Home > Financial Management > Create WIP Adjustment page
Select the transaction
Make the following edits in the Quantity, Cost, and Rate fields with the desired value.
Run the Post-to-WIP (PTW) job.
Run the Import Financial Actuals (IFA) job.

But, when a negative-quantity transaction is entered, (quantity less than 0) an out-of-sync situation may occur if there are not enough actual hours available to handle the corresponding credit.

Generally, Clarity does support negative transactions in WIP on the financial side, but there are situations when a negative quantity transaction does not update on the project/assignment correctly, causing quantity between WIP and assignments to become out of sync.

Clarity assignments cannot show negative work, therefore if the net quantity between two transactions results in a negative, PPM will show 0.

The following methods are acceptable to negate a transaction.

Here is an example of a transaction that was original entered as:

Date = MM/DD/YYYY
Quantity = 10
Cost(rate) = 10.01
Rate = 10.02

For more information on what is expected to be entered in the fields above, please refer to the Additional Information section where the documentation is referenced.

Method 1:

Create a transaction for the same specific transaction date with negated Quantity = -10
Run Post-to-WIP job
Run Import Financial Actuals job

Method 2:

From the 'Create WIP Transaction' page, select the transaction and click the 'Reverse' button
From the 'Approve WIP Adjustment' page, select the transaction and click the 'Approve' button
Run Import Financial Actuals job

NOTE: If a negative transaction was entered initially such as

Date = MM/DD/YYYY
Quantity = -20
Cost(rate) = 0
Rate = 1

And then reversed, the assignment actuals will show 20. To correct the project side and then the cost plan again, enter another transaction with the negative quantity needs to be created for the same date/task.
If you cannot match the quantity to a specific date, you may need to check the slices for ID=2 for the assignment to find the exact days there are amounts.

Date = MM/DD/YYYY
Quantity = -20 (slice amount for each slice date)
Cost(rate) = 0
Rate = 1

and run the Post-to-WIP and Import Financial Actuals job to have it appear on the project side.
To then fix the cost plan again you will need to reverse the transaction just created and then approve the WIP Adjustment.
This transaction will need to be deleted from table pac_imp_actuals_export before the Import Financial Actuals job runs.

Additional Information

The following scenarios are how Clarity treats negative transactions.

Scenario 1: Different quantity, same date

Enter 5 actuals for SAME transaction date
Enter -8 actuals for SAME transaction date

Clarity interprets this as:

- There are 5 hours originally.
- Then there are -8 hours.
- 5 - 8 = -3

RESULT is 0, since negative hours (-3) are discarded.
WIP would show -3 quantity

Scenario 2: Different quantity, same date

Enter -5 actuals for SAME transaction date
Enter 8 actuals for SAME transaction date

Clarity interprets this as:

There are -5 hours originally, which is discarded. 0 is the result.
Then there are 8 hours.
0 + 8 = 8 WIP would show 3

RESULT is 8 since it is a positive result.
WIP would show 3

Scenario 3: Different quantity, same date

Enter 8 actuals for transaction date
Enter -5 actuals for SAME transaction date

Clarity interprets this as:

There are 8 hours originally.
Then there are -5 hours.
8 - 5 = 3

RESULT is 3, since it is a positive result.
WIP would show 3 (match)

Scenario 4: Different dates

Enter 8 hours of actuals for transaction date1
Enter -3 hours of actuals for DIFFERENT transaction date2

Clarity interprets this as:

There are 8 hours on original transaction date1.
There are -5 hours on original transaction date2.
These are separate transaction dates.

RESULT is 8, because:

+8 is posted on transaction date1
-3 is backposted on transaction date2, which is discarded because it is negative.
WIP would show 8 for date1, -3 for date2 (net of 5 for both dates)

There will be an issue when a reversal occurs on a negative transaction because if an original negative showed as 0 in Clarity (as described above), then the reversal adds a positive quantity, which in essence, doubles the amount.

Scenario 5: Reversal

Enter -8 actuals for transaction date. Result in Clarity is 0 because the actuals cannot be below 0
Reverse the transaction which creates a debit amount of +8.
Import the transaction back to the project.

Result: Clarity shows +8

SUMMARY:

Negative actuals posted on a specific date does not cancel out actuals from a different date.

In summary, when using negative transactions, you should have a pre-posting (include Post to WIP and run Import Financial Actuals job) validation done on the existing actuals total on the exact transaction dates that will be used in the transactions, making sure that enough positive units of actuals exist on the project for the dates that negative quantities are going to be posted to.

We do not recommend Reversing or Transferring any negative transactions as it will inflate Clarity actual hours. If this is encountered, please contact Broadcom Support for the exact instructions on how to rectify the issue as it will involve the following corrective steps:

Home - Financial Management - Manual Transaction - Enter same transaction date with negative quantity to offset the overage
Run the Import Financial Actuals job to correct the project-side.
Pause the Import Financial Actuals job
Reverse the above transaction
Home - Financial Management - Approve WIP Adjustment - filter for the above transaction to correct the financial side.
Delete the entry from PAC_IMP_ACTUALS_EXPORT table - to not have the Import Financial Actuals job to process the transaction that causes the issue
Resume the Import Financial Actuals job

Timesheets transactions are not subject to this type of out-of-sync situation, because the you cannot enter negative hours on a timesheet.

Using XOG:

To avoid any mismatches in Actuals in Team, Task and Cost plans, XOG of transactions must be done in two steps: first XOG with positive values, second import is XOG of negative values
- Support recommendation is to make sure both XOG imports are separate, and in different XML files
- We need XOG to process the positive quantities first and then the negative quantities separately as this will ensure there will be enough positive value to handle the negative value.

DOCUMENTATION

Set Up Financial Transactions, Voucher Headers, and WIP Adjustments