Report Painter Request - Cost Center and WBS Element

Question

Hi Everyone,
Currently, my company settles all project related expenses through to a cost center by way of an internal settlement cost element (category 21).  The issue with this is that when the expense gets to the cost center, they lose all visability as to where the expense originated, such as salaries or travel expense (category 1 cost elements).  We can't switch the settlements to the originating cost element from wbs to cost center just because of the additional data/volume that will cause.  My thought was to create a report painter that can run by cost center but also show the wbs's that settle to that cost center and group the expenses by primary cost element (cat 1).  I'm assuming that there is a way to marry a cost center and wbs element by way of the wbs settlement rule but how would that be done for reporting purposes?  I've seen it done before by way of a nightly job that created sets based on the combination of cost center and wbs but I'm not sure how that was done.  Any advise and examples?
Example:
Cost Center:  IT
WBS: A.0017.01.01 (settles to cost center IT)
Postings made:
1.  CC IT and CE 552000 "salaries"..............................$20,000
2.  WBS A.0017.01.01 and CE 552000 "salaries"........... $5,000
3.  Settlement of WBS to CC (expenses flow through to CC IT by way of CE 985000)
I want to run CC IT and see that the account 552000 really shows $25,000 and can be broken down by cost object (CC and WBS by the amounts above)
Thanks,
Pete

Answer 1

Hi Peter,
I had a similar requirement and used report painter report group 1SHK-002 (in library 1VK).
I took a copy of the standard and ameneded it slightly, I switched the explode so it occured on the cost center not cost element.
The report runs so that direct costs on the cost center are shown at primary cost level. And values settled to the cost center are shown on the partner object. In your case i guess WBS Elements (Partner ObjType WBS).
Now in my case I didnt need cost element breakdown on partner level, just on cost center so effectively I have(sorry for text alignment but I hope you get the idea):
GL1   .............  100
GL2   .............  250
+ Cost center1 total ....350
GL3 .............   50
GL4 ............. 100
+ Cost center2 total.... 150
Primary Cost Total ..... 500
X-YZ-1.200 .............   50
X-YZ-1.400 ............. 100
+ WBS total ............. 150
IO 1............. 100
IO 2  ............. 100
+IO total  ............. 200
Partner Total............. 350
Overall total .............  850.
Its not exactly like your requirement but it might be a good report for you to work with to get what you need.
Elaine