You can valuate incoming sales orders (as expected revenues) and transfer them from SD to CO-PA in order to obtain an early estimate of anticipated profits. By analyzing this data characteristic values, you can obtain early profitability results for individual segments of your business. Consequently, you can create reports that not only reflect the course of actual profits and contribution margins on the basis of billing documents, but also allow you to analyze these developments on the basis of incoming orders. (To analyze incoming orders, specify record type A in the report. To analyze billing data, specify record type F.)

This function is especially useful when there is a long span of time between when you open the sales order and when you actually bill the customer. It allows you to react early and appropriately if you notice any unexpected developments.

When you create or change a sales order, the system automatically transfers line items to Profitability Analysis in realtime. You can determine in which period the sales order should appear in CO-PA.

• Period of the date of entry

• Period of the planned delivery or the scheduled billing dates

You make this setting in Customizing under Actual flows of values ® Transfer incoming sales orders ® Activate incoming sales orders. You need to set the corresponding indicator for each controlling area in the operating concern.

If the sales order is pre-costed using a CO unit cost estimate, you can transfer the calculated value to the sales order using a condition type. By assigning the SD fields to value fields in CO-PA, you can ensure that this preliminary costing value is updated in CO-PA. (This can be especially useful for make-to-order manufacturers.) You can also transfer the unit cost estimate by maintaining a costing key accordingly. It is also possible to transfer different quantity fields from the sales order, provided that you have assigned them to quantity fields in CO-PA.

Orders are updated according as follows, depending on how they were activated.

• Activate for date of entry

• Transfer with date of delivery/scheduled billing date

If the sales order is changed (either its values or characteristics), the line items already posted to CO-PA are completely canceled, and new line items containing the new characteristics and values are transferred from the order.

Errors may occur when the order is posted to CO-PA. This may occur, for example, if you defined valuation using the current standard cost estimate but the system could not find one, or if a derivation rule was not defined completely. In this case, no line items are posted to Profitability Analysis. The system saves the "original" records that contain errors in a separate table. You can display any records containing errors by choosing in the application menu Actual Postings ® Periodic adjustments ® Post incoming orders subsequently ® Display.

Once you have corrected the errors, you can repost to CO-PA the records that contained them by choosing Actual Postings ® Incoming order with errors ® Subsequent posting. You can perform this function in the test run as well as in the update run.

The error table then indicates which line items have been reposted. You can delete them from the table by choosing Actual Postings ® Incoming order with errors ® Delete.

It is possible to subsequently post existing sales orders to Profitability Analysis. This is particularly useful if you implement CO-PA after SD and you wish to transfer sales orders, for example, for the current or previous periods to CO-PA.

Subsequent posting is divided into two steps that you should execute in the following order:

1. Prepare Subsequent Posting of Sales Orders - A profitability segment is determined in the sales order if one does not already exist.
2. Post Sales Orders Subsequently - Sales orders with a profitability segment are selected and copied to Profitability Analysis.