You can also store the automatic account assignment for each profit center individually.
You need the automatic account assignment per profit center -- for example, if you want to post price variances in the Materials Management component (MM) to the profit center of the material.
Without the automatic account assignment, you can do this only if you do not define the price variance account as a cost element.
Within the automatic account assignment you define a product cost center for each product profit center. The R/3 System derives this cost center from the profit center during automatic account assignment.