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Object documentationOperating Concern

 

An operating concern represents an organizational unit in your company for which the sales market has a uniform structure. It is the valuation level for Profitability Analysis (CO-PA).

Structure

You structure an operating concern by selecting

  • Characteristics

    You should ask yourself at what level your analyses should be performed, such as the sales organization, region, product, or customer level.

  • and Value Fields (only in costingbased Profitability Analysis)

    You should ask yourself which values and key figures should be analyzed, such as revenues, sales deductions, costs, or quantities.

  • as well as G/L accounts (only in accountbased Profitability Analysis)

This structure may vary greatly from one company to the next. For example, the structure of total production costs in a manufacturing company differs from that in a wholesale or retail company. Consequently, you need to "model" COPA in Customizing by defining the characteristics and value fields that you want to analyze.

The system then generates the necessary Database Tables for CO-PA Transaction Data and access programs based on how you defined your operating concern.

See also:

For information on the procedure for defining an operating concern, choose Structures, then Define Operating Concern in Customizing.

Characteristics for Profitability Segments

All the characteristics in the operating concern are used in the line item. However, you can restrict the characteristics for a profitability segment that forms the basis for valuation. This is because it is unnecessary and impractical for a profitability segment to use characteristics that are almost always populated and each has a different value. You should deactivate such characteristics when creating a profitability segment. Otherwise the data volume of the profitability segments is too large and hampers system performance.

One characteristic that should not be used in profitability segments is the sales order in repetitive manufacturing.

You specify in Customizing which characteristics are to belong in which profitability segments. For more information about this function, see Customizing for Profitability Analysis under Start of the navigation path Structures Next navigation step Define Profitability Segments Characteristics (Segment-Lvl Characteristics) End of the navigation path.