CI relationships
To get reports that represent the total costs for a business service, there must be some association between the service and the CIs that make up the service. This is done with CI relationships.
Before you begin
Role required: financial_mgmt_admin
About this task
Use the demo data of the Cost Management plugin to understand how to check all expense lines related to a business service.
Procedure
Navigate to All > Cost > Config > Business Services.
Select Retail.
View the business service map by selecting the dependency views icon (
Image omitted: dependency-views.png
Dependency views.\).
Dependency views.\).
This view shows that the dbaix901nyc server is a dependency of the Retail Adding Points, Retail POS, and Retail business services. So whenever the dbaix901nyc server incurs a cost, it would be represented at each of the business services.
The dbaix901nyc server is a member of the Sun E20K Servers NY CI rate card, so the expenses can be verified from this CI rate card.
To view them:
1. Navigate to **All** > **Cost** > **Costs** > **CI Rate Cards**.
2. Select **Sun E20K Servers NY**.
3. Select the Expense Line related list.
If this related list is not available, configure your form layout to display the Expense Line → Rate Card related list.
4. Filter the related list for **short description contains dbaix901nyc**.
The server's expenses are now visible:
Image omitted: CostDemoServerexp.png
Cost Demo Server Expense
Cost Demo Server Expense
This example contains one direct expense \(**inherited = false**\), and three inherited expenses that have been generated from other direct expenses. These inherited expenses are based on CI relationships, which allow for reporting at any business service level.
For more information on expense aggregation, see [Enable relationship aggregation](t_EnableRelationshipAggregation.md).
Parent Topic:Cost Management