Standard costs

Standard costs are costs that can be added to a development activity. For example, your organization can estimate the standard cost of meals when the development activity takes place externally, or standard pedagogical rates for development activities.

You can define standard costs in multiple currencies and development activities can also be associated with standard costs in multiple currencies.

Standard costs can be flagged to be included in the costs that display on the catalog. However, if a development activity is associated with multiple standard costs flagged as included, the total cost will display on the catalog only if the costs are all in the same currency.

Standard costs are used differently depending on whether you use learning budgets.

  • If resource development activities are not associated with learning budgets, standard costs can be added only at the development activity level and not at the resource development activity level. Standard costs are essentially informational.

  • If resource development activities are associated with learning budgets, the development activity costs default to the resource development activities and are used as estimated costs.

    Note: Resource development activities can only be associated with development activity costs that are in the same currency as the budget to which they are attached.

The system provides four calculation methods for standard costs. Only two are available to organizations that do not use learning budgets.

Note: (France localization only) You can use any of these calculation methods to track hours outside of work costs with these conditions: the cost type must be have the Use For Hours Outside Work option selected, and the unit of measure must be Other Unit - Hours.

  • Costs based on a flat rate

    Your organization may want to estimate flat rates for such things as meals, hotels, car rental, and so on.

    The amount you specify on a flat-rate cost displays as is on the development activity and is multiplied by the number of units for the activity that corresponds to the units of measure that you specify.

    You can change the number of units on activities. On resource activity requests, you can change both the number of units and the amount.

    You can flag a flat-rate standard cost to be included in the catalog. When you add standard costs to a development activity, the system displays the sum of all the flagged development activity costs in the catalog that is available to managers, mentors, and resources. The learning manager can view the cost details for all costs associated with a development activity.

  • Activity-specific costs

    Activity specific costs are flat-rate costs for which you specify the amounts directly on the development activities that use the cost. Use this standard cost method for costs for which there is no standard rate that would apply across development activities.

    For example, if your pedagogical costs are unique to each development activity, you will define an activity-based cost for pedagogical costs and enter the cost directly on each activity.

    Note: This is the only cost for which you specify a value directly on the development activity. Flat-rate costs cannot be changed on the development activity, although you can change the number of units. Resource-base and professional-category base costs have a value of zero on the development activity. They are assigned a value when they are associated with a resource by way of a resource development activity request.

  • Costs based on the resource rate (learning budgets only)

    In this case, you would specify an "Other Pay Type" that will be used as the base for the cost calculation. Other Pay Types are defined in Administrator > Set Up by the administrator and assigned a rate on the resource record. For more information, see the Global Human Resources User Guide.

    When a resource-rate cost is assigned to a development activity, its value is not calculated on the activity. When the activity is assigned to a resource, the system will use the "Other Type Rate" associated with the resource, and multiply it by the multiplier entered on the cost, if applicable (the default is 1).

    For example, if resources attend a class outside working hours, your organization may have a policy of paying these resources at half their normal rate of pay. The administrator could define an Other Pay Type of "HOURLY-LEARNING-RATE" and assign it a rate of 50 percent of the base salary on the resources' records. You could then create an "OFF-HOURS-RESOURCE-COST" using the HOURLY-LEARNING-RATE Other Pay Type, the HOURS unit of measure, and a multiplier of 1.

    Note: For this method to work, each resource assigned to a development activity that uses the cost must be assigned a rate for the Other Pay Type assigned to the cost.

  • Costs based on a professional rate (learning budgets only)

    You can define standard costs based on a resource's professional category. You can estimate the cost of a development activity based on an average rate for resources that belong to a professional category.

    When a professional-rate cost is assigned to a development activity, its value is not calculated on the activity. When the activity is assigned to a resource, the system will use the rate specified for the professional category to which the resource belongs, and multiply it by the multiplier specified on the cost, if applicable (the default is 1).

    Note: For this method to work, each resource assigned to an activity that uses the cost must be assigned to a professional category and a learning hourly rate must be specified for the professional category to which the resource belongs.

There can be more than one standard cost per cost type. For example, meals can have separate rates for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Standard costs can be assigned to any development activity.