SAP IM Overview

SAP Investment Management (SAP IM) is a module in ERP that helps organizations plan and manage
investments and capital expenditures. The SAP IM module contains functions for managing
investments in fixed assets.

The investment program can be used to augment planning and budgeting at the level of the
individual measure by offering planning, budgeting and monitoring of a comprehensive budget.
Investment programs are helpful to enterprises that create an investment plan and a budget
annually, and wish to monitor the budget as a whole, rather than just at the level of individual
measures. Using investment programs, user can obtain an overview of planning and budgeting
processes in complex enterprise structures for all investments and large projects of the group,
while at the same time maintaining strict budgetary control. The meaning of "investment" extends
beyond the sense of traditional investments that must be capitalized for bookkeeping and tax
purposes and encompasses any measure that involves costs and may only generate benefits after a
certain time period has elapsed.

Each module is intended to allow separate management accounting, budgetary approvals and
appropriations that are of significant scope. Users can monitor an entire Capital Investment
budget rather than just the individual levels within it. They can also get overviews of
planning and budgeting processes of all investments and large group projects while
maintaining strict control over budgets. Investment in SAP IM can be referred to as:

 Capital Investments, including acquiring fixed assets either through purchase or in-
house production;
 Research and Development;
 Projects that are considered overhead, such as employee continuing.
 Maintenance Programs

The investment program and the appropriation request are objects that originate in SAP IM
component. In order to represent the investment, SAP IM integrates with SAP CO, SAP PM,
SAP PS, SAP FI-AA and SAP HCM. The integration with Asset Accounting (FI-AA)
enables you to easily capitalize the costs of internal orders and WBS elements that require
capitalization to a fixed asset. Costs that do not require capitalization can be settled to cost
accounting.

SAP IM follows the Top-Bottom Budget Distribution principle in a hierarchical manner

enabling monitoring and tracking. The Appropriation Request (AR) works in a workflow
manner having multiple levels of approval process. The Capital Investment that has started
during the middle of the year can be easily carried forward to the next fiscal year with
complete reporting.