Account-based Profitability Analysis
Description
General information
As of Release 3.0, CO-PA supports two types of Profitability Analysis:
- "account-based Profitability Analysis", which uses accounts and an accounting approach (new in Release 3.0),
- "costing-based Profitability Analysis", which divides costs and revenues according to user-defined value fields and uses a costing approach (corresponds to the CO-PA System before Release 3.0).
Account-based Profitability Analysis provides the CO Module with a consistent settlement course from the primary postings via cost centers, orders/projects and cost objects to profitability segments. In particular, account-based Profitability Analysis meets the requirements of many users who want to use Profitability Analysis but do not create a preliminary cost estimate for their sales activities.
As before, you can also display results according to cost components in costing.
Advantages of account-based Profitability Analysis
- Accounts as a uniform structural basis for all of accounting
- Reconciliation of internal and external accounting (by accounts)
Overview over functionality
- You can transfer the following actual data to account-based Profitability Analysis by account:
- Revenues and sales deductions from billing
- Costs of goods manufactured from goods issued
- Overhead costs from the settlement of internal orders or projects
- Costs from internal cost settlement to profitability segments
- Costs assigned directly to profitability segments from FI or MM (invoice receipt)
- Non-allocated cost center costs from cost center assessment to CO-PA
- Production variances from the settlement of production orders
- Planning of revenues, sales deductions and costs by account
- Display of results by account with a hierarchical representation of accounts, account groups and so on
- Reports in the controlling area currency, company code currency and transaction currency. If the company code currency and controlling area currency are the same, you can also display the operating concern currency.
Change system parameters in customizing
If you only intend to use account-based Profitability Analysis, you only have to define your characteristics when you create the data structure for your operating concern. You do not need to define value fields. Likewise, you do not have to maintain the assignments of accounts or condition types to value fields.
You need to activate the actual data transfer to account-based
Profitability Analysis in Customizing under 
Activate Profitability Analysis.
Changes in procedure
If you use both types of Profitability Analysis in the same system, you can define the type in which each user needs to work by entering the parameter "ETP" in their user master record. Otherwise, the user receives a dialog box in which to choose the type of Profitability Analysis, and will remain in that type until the end of that session. He or she can also change the type of Profitability Analysis at any time under the menu option "Environment -> Set operating concern."
If only one type of Profitability Analysis is active, the system sets the parameter "ETP" automatically.
Further notes
If you use both costing-based and account-based Profitability Analysis, you
can update your data in account-based CO-PA at a higher level than in
costing-based CO-PA (see also
Segment level characteristics in Customizing ).
The vast number of profitability segments in account-based Profitability Analysis detracts significantly from system performance, since it requires one totals record for each segment and account. To reduce the number of segments and thereby improve performance, you should deactivate at least one of the fixed characteristics "Customer" or "Product". Do not activate the characteristic "Sales order" in account-based CO-PA unless you have only a small number of orders.