In the application component CO-PA, you can define your master data, the basic structures of this form of profitability analysis. This includes both units you want to evaluate (characteristics) and the categories in which you analyze values. In costing-based CO-PA, you define "value fields" in which to store your data for analysis. In account-based CO-PA, the values are structured by account.

Using the SAP master data (customer, product, customer hierarchy) or CO-PA derivation rules, the system can derive additional characteristics based on the ones entered manually or transferred from primary transactions. The combination of characteristic values forms a multidimensional profitability segment, for which you can analyze profitability by comparing its costs and revenues.

If you reorganize parts of your company, such as your sales districts or customer hierarchies, you can change the assignments between characteristics for data that has already been posted.

The actual postings represent the most important source of information in CO-PA. You can transfer both sales orders and billing documents from the Sales and Distribution (SD) application component to CO-PA in realtime. In addition, an interface program is available to let you transfer external data to the R/3 System. You can also transfer costs from cost centers, orders and projects, as well as costs and revenues from direct postings (G/L account postings in FI, orders received in MM, and so on) or settle costs from CO to profitability segments.

In costing-based CO-PA, you can valuate incoming sales orders or billing documents to automatically determine anticipated sales deductions or costs. You can also revaluate your data periodically to adjust the initial, realtime valuation or add the actual costs of goods manufactured.

In CO-PA Planning, you can create a sales and profit plan. Whereas both types of Profitability Analysis can receive actual data in parallel, there is no common source of planning data. Consequently, you always plan either in accounts (account-based CO-PA) or in value fields (costing-based CO-PA). In costing-based CO-PA you can use automatic valuation to calculate planned revenues, sales deductions and costs of goods manufactured based on the planned sales quantity.

The manual planning function lets you define planning screens for your organization. With this you can display reference data in planning, calculate formulas, create forecasts, and more. Planning can be performed at any degree of detail. For example, you can plan at a higher level, and have this data distributed top-down automatically.

In automatic planning, you can copy and revaluate actual or planning data for a large number of profitability segments at once. You can also transfer planned sales quantities from (costing-based) CO-PA to Sales and Operations Planning (SOP) for the purpose of creating a production plan there.

The Information System lets you interactively analyze existing data from a profitability standpoint using the functions of the drilldown reporting tool. There you can navigate through a multidimensional "data cube" using a number of different functions (such as drilldown or switching hierarchies). The system displays data in either value fields or accounts, depending on the currently active type of Profitability Analysis and the type to which the report structure is assigned. (Each report structure is assigned to either costing-based or account-based CO-PA.)