Custom Subassignments of the Financial Statement Item 

Definition

Characteristic that is defined by customers to enhance the transaction data of consolidation (totals records and line items).

Use

You can enhance the transaction data of consolidation with up to five subassignments, for example with the subassignment of the product group, the region, the division or the distribution channel. This enhancement is necessary, if the subassignments which SAP delivers, do not cover your group’s need for information.

The following standard subassignments for the financial statement item are delivered by SAP:

●      Partner unit

●      Subitem categories and subitems

●      Transaction currency

●      Year of acquisition

●      Period of acquisition

●      Unit of measure

Just like the standard subassignments, you can control which items are to be posted and entered with the custom subassignments via the breakdown category.

Differentiation of the Usage Possibilities of the Subitem

You can specify any number of breakdowns for the item values via the standard characteristics Subitem Category and Subitem, by maintaining several values for the characteristic subitem category (for example region, functional area, transaction type and so on). However, you can only use one subitem category per item (as a fixed value in the breakdown category).

By defining additional subassignments you can specify several custom breakdowns per item.

Structure

Definition of Characteristic

You define the subassignments at the beginning of Customizing for Consolidation.

You can define existing entities of other SAP components as subassignments, for example the characteristics country, region or functional area. But you can also define new entities whose technical environment (Data Dictionary, program, maintenance interface and so on) have to be generated again. You carry out the generation in Customizing. You do not have to carry out any programming work.

The custom subassignments enhance the totals database and the line item database of consolidation with additional key fields. Depending on the usage of this subassignment, the data volume in the database can increase greatly.

For more information on the definition of subassignments, see the Implementation Guide (IMG) for Consolidation in step Add Characteristics.

Dependency between Custom Subassignments

Consolidation supports the following combinations:

●     Independent characteristics

These are characteristics whose values you define independently of the values of the other characteristics.

Product group

●     Characteristics in a compound

These are pairs of characteristics in which one of the characteristics is an independent characteristic. The values of the second characteristic (dependent characteristic) are dependent on the values of the independent characteristic.

Country and region

The country is the independent characteristic and the region is the dependent characteristic. In every country there are different regions.

Note that Consolidation does not support any combinations where there are more than two characteristics in a compound.

●     Subitem category-like characteristic

These are characteristics in a compound where you set a fixed value in the breakdown category for the independent characteristic.

Characteristic pair Subitem Category and Subitem

You use this combination when you require more than five additional subassignments, but you do not want to simultaneously expand an individual item. For each subassignment which you want to portray through this, create a value for the independent characteristic (for example the value functional area). You assign this value via the breakdown category of the respective item which should be expanded by this subassignment. You maintain the value of the subassignment (for example the different functional areas) in the independent characteristic.

Characteristic Values

The characteristic values are the master data of the characteristics. You maintain this master data in the IMG of Consolidation in section master data, step Custom Subassignments: Define Characteristic Values

For characteristics which you have defined with reference to entities in other SAP components, the system offers the master data maintenance of the corresponding SAP components.

For characteristics which you have defined with a new check table, the system offers a maintenance transaction which was specially generated for this. In addition to this you can transfer values by means of a flexible upload in the system.

Default Values

While defining a  subassignment you can decide whether you want to maintain a default value. You define the default values in Customizing for Consolidation under Master Data, step Define Default Values for Subassignments  

In exactly the same way you can enter a default value for the standard characteristics partner unit and subitem.

You can use the default value of a subassignment as follows:

●     For entry and manual posting

In the breakdown category, you can specify that the system updates the default value when you do not enter a value for the characteristic.

●     For automatic postings

For example, in Customizing you can specify that the system posts the default value for a subassignment if it can not derive the value from the triggering document line item. For more information, see the SAP Library for each consolidation function.

For dependent characteristics you can enter a default value for the dependent characteristic for each value of the independent characteristic.

Hierarchy

For every custom characteristic you can maintain the hierarchies manually. These hierarchies can be displayed in research and active excel reports.

In exactly this way you can maintain hierarchies for the standard characteristics item, acquisition year, acquisition period, sub-item and document type.

For more information, see Customizing for Consolidation under Master Data, step Maintain Hierarchies for Characteristics.