How to tack CapEx in JIRA

[Regina Friedman]

We are using dedicated agile product teams and are moving away from formal project management and timesheets. We are using JIRA and are looking for a way to track CapEx. I have found formulas to compute these numbers but was wondering if there is a way to tag work in JIRA to indicate that it is CapEx or OpEx?

[George Mihailoff]

You can use Quantify to automatically track development time and then use the full power of JQL to query tickets marked as Capex. This can be a custom field, label or any other combination. Data can be exported and provided to accounting with the ability to trace down the numbers.

[Miron Ivano _Timescale_]

Hi,

One way a customer of ours solves this is to create jira custom select fields called Capex with a Yes/No value. Then this is selected for every ticket. They also add a WBSO filed for tax credits reference and R&D custom select filed with values for each ticket

At the end since they needed to send a custom EXCEL report to their finance department containing  only the JIRA Data they needed  plus the location-city of the person that is logging hours they chose our app - Timescale to do that.

[Jack Brickey]

I need more info to be able to offer effective ideas I expect. What do you mean by track opex/capex? Do you want to simply filter on issues that involve these or do you want to total expenditures. For the former you could do this via uniques issuetypes or a custom field or maybe components would work. 

I don’t see Jira as a effective tool for reporting financial details but it might meet your needs. Too, an addon like EasyBI might come in handy here. 

[Jack Brickey]

So you can do this OOTB. 

• Create a drop down or checkbox custom field where you can select the financial category 
• if you plan to have multiple product types within a Jira project then create another custom field to select the product or use existing Components field.
• enable and require time logging.

issue assignees must select the correct values. Then you can generate reports leveraging these fields.

[Regina Friedman]

Thank you - we will try that.

[Regina Friedman]

Thank you for your quick reply. What we were hoping to do was to tag issues that should be capitalized (CapEx), ask the resource to record the number of hours for that issue, and then be able to provide our accounting department with a traceable number of hours charged to capitalized tasks per product type.

[Aaron Cook]

If you use Tempo and setup Accounts you can accomplish this.  We are currently using this for our CapEx reporting along with EazyBI.  We have gone from traditional waterfall to agile.  Our PdM's or PO's will set the account field.  We discovered we needed to make this a required field as well.  We found this to be more accurate than using the Teams function  in Tempo.  

[Lisa Hooper]

We are setting up Tempo right now and transitioning from waterfall to Agile.  I would like to hear more about how you set this up.  Tempo seems to allow only one Account code to be active on a Project.  We have a default Expense code, and for Capital projects we assign the capital code when we have a DLE estimate, which is derived from estimates at the User Story level.  Any advise or suggestions you have would be GREATLY appreciated.

[Jordan Lampe]

I came for this answer. We have a couple of issues that could be R&D and CapEx—if I understand them correctly—but Tempo only allows one account per issue. Interested to see how others are handling this. 

[George Mihailoff]

In our app, the same issue can go into multiple reports.

[Lauren Smith]

@Jordan Lampe  I'm curious if you found success using Tempo/Jira for the R&D/Capex reporting?  Any learning along the way?

[Jordan Lampe]

@Lauren we ended up creating a script that generated accounts for each Initiative issue type we created. These Initiatives are housed in an Initiative Project in Jira. We then roll up hours for linked Epics and their nested stories. 

[carolyn french]

In Tempo, you can use Capex and Opex category types in Tempo Accounts at the issue level. You can link more than one Account to a Jira project, so that when you go to select which Account in the field dropdown on the issue, you will see all of the linked Accounts (1:many relationship).

https://help.tempo.io/cloud/en/tempo-timesheets/tutorials-for-tempo-timesheets/tracking-time-on-capex-and-opex-for-tax-credits.html

Or at the worklog level by setting up a work attribute as type Account-

https://help.tempo.io/cloud/en/tempo-timesheets/setting-up-and-configuring-tempo-timesheets/creating-work-attributes-for-customized-time-logging.html

[Christine Stone]

Question for this group - according to accounting rules, not all activity in an Agile sprint are capitalizable.  So if you look at a specific issue - it would be groomed (opx), developed and tested (capx) and demoed (opx).   Also, the issue would have support from Product and Delivery managers as well as developers - how do you solve for this?

[carolyn french]

@Christine Stone 

Good question that I think probably has a few different ways to solve for - sometimes I've seen what the activities you've referenced as sub-tasks, but if everything needs to stay in one issue going through a workflow, then you can use Tempo Account as a work attribute. That means every time a different activity's time is logged on the issue, the user can decide whether it's opex or capex, and that will stay on the worklog level.