Pure Cost Distribution Methods (Push Approach)
Use
The pure cost distribution ("Push") methods in the SAP System are:
Assessment uses a secondary cost element, and is useful in highlighting for which purpose the costs assigned via assessment were used. Distribution, in contrast, leaves all primary cost elements intact on the receiver. It is useful where the origins of costs are of more interest than their causes.
Features
Resource Consumption
Assessment and distribution are available for the assignment of cost center resources to business processes. The tracing factor in an assessment cycle or distribution cycle is in both cases the resource driver.
For example, the resource driver can appear as a statistical key figure illustrating a measurement for the resource consumption of a business process. This statistical key figure can be taken, when necessary, from the Logistics Information System (LIS) by creating a connection between the LIS key figure relevant to the resource driver and the statistical key figure of the business process. As an example the "Number of Purchase Orders" can be logged automatically in an LIS information structure whenever a purchase order is posted. You can also assign resources to business processes using fixed percentages.
The costs appearing on business processes due to this method are always treated as fixed costs.
Process Consumption
To assign business processes to receiver objects, the R/3 System offers assessment because in Activity-Based Costing (ABC) the question of the source of consumption costs on the receiver remains paramount. The
Process Driver appears as a tracing factor in the assessment cycle, just like the resource driver. The LIS can serve as a source of relevant process driver information, as it does for resource drivers in the scenario described above. If you define a process assessment directly to the profitability segments in the Profitability Analysis component (CO-PA), the value fields in the operating concern serve as the sole tracing factors. However, in order to create a causal relationship between profitability segment and process consumption, you can transfer the process driver information from the LIS to the corresponding value fields.The process costs posted on the receiver object via assessment are always treated as fixed costs.
Consequences of Pure Cost Distribution Methods (Push Approach)
The pure cost distribution (Push) methods make it possible, through the appropriate selection of resource and process drivers, to assign overhead costs to their originating receiver objects (such as products and customers). Nevertheless, this is solely an assignment of all occurring costs that does not take the true activity quantities consumed into account. You thus cannot answer questions dealing with the productivity of overhead processes, or with the costs of idle resource capacity.