Valuation: Retail Method of Accounting The Retail Method of Accounting (RMA) is a method for valuation of inventories in retailing. It is frequently used if the inventory consists of many different articles with relatively low sales prices and there are a high number of sales transactions. The inventory is managed at an aggregated level, for example, the level of the material group. It is not updated upon each change to stock but rather at the end of the posting period. The inventory shown in the balance sheet at cost is derived, similar to the cost of goods sold, from the ratio of cost to retail value of the available stock.
Note
Note that you can use RMA only in certain countries.
This component enables you to carry out all inventory-changing and RMA-relevant transactions:
Aggregate the required level of the RMA valuation object for the RMA
Carry out the calculation according to RMA
Transfer the results to Accounting.
You can also analyze the RMA inventories in your BI system reporting according to various criteria.
The RMA has as a prerequisite the implementation of SAP ERP and BI. In SAP ERP, the Cost Method of Accounting (CMA) must be active and the inventory must be initialized. The valuation according to the RMA is made as follows: At the end of each posting period, the stock values are recalculated according to RMA and the differences are posted to special correction accounts in FI.
For the correct consideration of sales at the cash desk in RMA, you also require SAP POS DM in order to transfer the sales direct from the POS to your BI System.

The foundation for inventory valuation according to the RMA is the raw data on the basis of the inventory-changing transactions in SAP ERP. SAP ERP loads the transactions into your BI system. This is an ongoing process. You can schedule the daily upload of article movements, cost and retail revaluations, and cost allocation transactions (such as rebates and price differences) from SAP ERP, for example, with a process chain. SAP delivers the template Retail Foundation , which transmits the data to the DSO objects of the Trade Foundation . These DSO objects hold the data article-specific and date-specific and also supply other retail valuation methods ( Cost Method of Accounting (CMA), Extended Method of Accounting (ERMA)).
Note that the system does not transfer retail price changes directly to your BI system. You must start the automatic retail revaluation at retail so that the inventory is revalued at retail. The original retail prices are also considered. See the release note
Determination of the Original Price
. We recommend that you run the automatic retail price revaluation daily.
If you make sales-order-related sales in SD, you only carry out the upload of billing document data from SAP ERP. You load the sales made at the cash desk with the sales transactions (billing document data) of the PIPE.
The system then transfers the data in buckets. These buckets represent the different lines of the RMA calculation schema. The system aggregates the data for the RMA valuation object and posting period and saves this in the DSO 0RMA_DS01 .
You prepare the RMA period-end closing at the end of the period with the following steps:
If you wish to analyze the inventory of the current posting period daily according to RMA, you can carry out the transfer of the raw data in buckets and the steps just covered more frequently than once per period.
You can run the transfer of the raw data in buckets and both of the subsequent steps more often than once per period, for example, if you wish to analyze the inventory of the current posting period daily according to RMA. The system then transfers the data using the delta procedure. With repeated execution of the RMA calculation schema, the data for an RMA period is always recalculated and the results are overwritten.
If you prefer this procedure, you can use a process chain, for example, similar to the reference Complete RMA Process Chain .
Ensure, however, that you always promptly update the material group hierarchy and the RMA object model based on it using the RMA Workbench .
From the RMA workbench, you start the RMA period end closing as a background job using the function
Period-End Closing.
The system then generates a period-end closing run for each site and an outbound IDoc with all RMA-relevant valuation objects of the site and the corresponding conditions for the FI postings.
SAP ERP generates a settlement request from the inbound IDoc. First the condition types delivered from your BI System are converted to the SAP ERP condition types assigned in Customizing.
The settlement request forwards the non-statistical conditions to the FI posting interface.
You can carry out period-end closing more than once for each period. In each case, only the delta of results compiled since the previous period-end closing using the contents of the DSO object 0RMA_DS01 is transferred to SAP ERP.
You can also cancel a period-end closing run. If a settlement request and FI documents have already been generated for this in SAP ERP, then these are also cancelled.
The result of the period-end closing in SAP ERP generates, for each period-end closing run, a settlement request in SAP ERP that contains, for each RMA valuation object, an item with the related conditions.
If you use the standard Customizing delivered by SAP, ending inventories and cost of goods sold are transferred separately by RMA and CMA from your BI System to SAP ERP and put into the settlement request in the form of statistical conditions. The calculation schema of the settlement request then calculates the differences and, from these, creates the postings to the RMA correction accounts in FI.
In your BI System, you can select and display each period-end closing run with the RMA workbench.
For further information, see Retail Method of Accounting .