Definition

A characteristic is an qualitative classification term such as division, region, department or company. Characteristics are criteria according to which, data for key figures is saved and evaluated, for example, revenue per division.

Structure

The characteristics can be both existing fields in the SAP System (for example, material) and enterprise-specific fields that you create when maintaining an aspect. The characteristics are stored in the EC-EIS/EC-BP field catalog and can be used in several aspects. You maintain the characteristics when defining an aspect.

You determine various characteristic values for a characteristic (for example, characteristic division has the values Pharmaceuticals, Colors, Chem .; characteristic region has the values North, South ). A combination of characteristic values (for example division : Pharma, Region : South) is called an evaluation object. You can find out how to maintain characteristic values in the section Maintaining Master Data .

Compound characteristics

Certain characteristics can only be interpreted in conjunction with another characteristic of the aspect. SAP uses the term compound characteristics for this. For example, the characteristic region is normally only maintained or interpreted in conjunction with a country . In this case a compound characteristic region is defined for the country . In the definition of such a characteristic, you determine the compound with the second characteristic.

Characteristic attributes

Characteristics can also have attributes, that describe the properties or assignments of the values. From this you can, for example, group products into a product group. The advantage of such characteristic attributes is that the information is stored in the master data rather than in the transaction data. Therefore, if you carry out a reorganization of your company at a later date and wish to change the assignments, these changes have an instant effect on the report without a database conversion.

Navigation attributes

You can store generated characteristics as attributes for user-defined characteristics with a generated check table (‘generated characteristics’).

In the report the navigation attributes are handled just as the characteristics of the aspect. You can carry out navigation functions with an attribute just as with other characteristics. In many cases the system can use one attribute to derive others. You can adopt these proposed multidimensional attributes and use them in your reports.

Display attributes

Display attributes are those that can be shown in the reports for information, but cannot be used for navigation. Depending on the origin of the characteristic, the display attributes are created differently:

You maintain the attributes in Customizing when maintaining the characteristics.

Fixed characteristics

As well as the aspect-specific characteristics, every EC-EIS and EC-BP data structure contains the fixed characteristics version , plan/actual indicator, fiscal year and period . You do not have to enter these fixed characteristics as they are automatically included when saving the data structure. Predefined check tables, whose contents you can maintain, exist for the fixed characteristics. The meaning of the fixed characteristics is explained in more detail in Master Data . The facility to hold data in various currencies is explained in Currencies .