Master Data
The master data consists of the permitted characteristic values of a characteristic and the relevant descriptive texts. When the transaction data is recorded, the system checks the characteristic value entries against this master data. There are two types of master data: characteristic values for fixed characteristics and characteristic values for user-defined characteristics.
Characteristic Values for Fixed Characteristics
Each EC-EIS and EC-BP data structure contains the fixed characteristics version, plan/actual indicator, fiscal year and period .
The plan/actual indicator separates plan data from actual data in the database. The planning functions edit plan data exclusively, data entry edits actual data exclusively. The data transfer applies equally to plan and actual data.
The version allows you to hold differing datasets in parallel. For the planning it serves as a plan version, but the actual data can also be held in different versions.
Reporting can compare plan and actual data of different versions in one report.
Note
The version and plan/actual indicator in Release 4.0 replace the version and the value type of earlier releases. The ‘Version’ of previous releases has been renamed as ‘Data area’. Neither the data area nor the value type are fixed characteristics in Release 4.0. However, they can still be managed as user-defined characteristics in the aspect. You can get details on the conversion from Release 3.x to 4.0 in the Release Information in the System.
The master data for the fiscal year are the fiscal years you wish to report on.
You define the number of periods per fiscal year in the fiscal year variant.
You maintain the values of the fixed characteristics version , fiscal year and period in Customizing. The characteristic values for the plan/actual indicator are delivered and do not have to be maintained.
Characteristic Values for User-Defined Characteristics
After you have created the user-defined characteristics you require in the aspect, you must define the corresponding characteristic values. For more information, see Maintaining Master Data .
When defining a user-defined characteristic, you can store one or more characteristics as attributes, for example, product group for a product. In this case, during master data maintenance, you do not just enter the characteristic values for a characteristic, but you also assign them to the attributes.
You can link characteristic values with one another using derivation rules. This way, in either manual data entry or automatic data transfer, you can derive unentered characteristic values from other values. For more information, see Derivation of Characteristic Values .