In Profitability Analysis, master data provides the fundamental data and content within the structures you have already determined by characteristics and value fields.

The system uses the combination of characteristic values to automatically create during a posting the affected market segment, that is the profitability segment that is being posted to. The specifications you make for the characteristic values form the basis for the automatic determination of the profitability segment.

• You can specify the valid characteristic values for the new characteristics you have defined. See also the section Maintain Characteristic Values in Customizing.
• You can place the characteristic values for a single characteristic into a hierarchical relationship. For more information, see the section Characteristics Hierarchy.
• You can specify which principles are to be applied for automatically determining further characteristic values when posting data to Profitability Analysis. For more information, see the sections dealing with Characteristic Derivation.
• You can perform a realignment so that changes made to master data in the SAP System and copied to characteristic derivation are also applied to past data in the CO-PA dataset.

You can also specify for value fields which principles are to be applied for automatically determining further characteristic values and setting these values in the value fields when additional data is posted. For more information, see the sections dealing with Valuation.