Settling Orders/Projects (SAP Library - Profitability Analysis (COPA))

Settling Orders/Projects

Use

In the SAP System, you can settle internal orders (component CO), sales orders (component SD), projects (component PS) as well as production orders and run schedules with production cost collectors (component PP) to profitability segments. These objects are used for various purposes relevant to Profitability Analysis.

Internal orders and projects can be used to control the costs of an internal activity, such as the costs of an advertising campaign. The costs of the activity are posted to the order and collected there. At the end of the activity, they are settled to the appropriate profitability segments, such as the product range and sales area. For more information, see the online documentation Internal Orders.

You can also use CO orders to calculate anticipated values in order to be able to evaluate the accuracy of your accrual method. First, you credit the accrual costs calculated in CO-PA to a special cost order for accruals (currently by manual posting only). When the costs are actually incurred, they are posted to that order as well so that the difference between the anticipated costs and the actual costs can be displayed at the order level.

A third possible use of internal orders or projects is in make-to-order manufacturing. If you are dealing with a sales orders from SD, a customer project or a CO order to which revenue postings are allowed, you can post costs (such as production costs and S&A costs) as well as revenue and sales deductions to the order or project. Then, when the product is complete, the costs and revenues can be settled to Profitability Analysis. It is also possible to transfer accrued values, which are particularly important for progress billing (such as cost of sales and reserves for imminent losses). For more information, see the online documentation Cost Object Controlling.

In repetitive manufacturing, it may also be useful to transfer the production variances calculated in CO-PC for both final production orders as well as run schedule headers (settled periodically) to CO-PA. The individual variance categories can be transferred separately. For more detailed information, see the section Transferring Production Variances and the Cost Object Controlling documentation.

If your system allows dual postings to a profitability segment and a statistical object (such as a statistical order), the statistical object is not settled to CO-PA. Dual postings such as this can be useful if, for example, you want to post the expenditures for a marketing campaign to a profitability segment comprising a specific product group and sales region, and at the same time post the costs to the relevant sales cost center for analysis purposes.

Prerequisites

Before you can settle orders or projects to Profitability Analysis in realtime, the controlling area you are working in must be activated. You do this in Customizing.

Before you can settle an order or project to a profitability segment, you must create a settlement rule for the settlement object with a profitability segment as a receiver. You do this when you maintain the master data for the order or project.

If the settlement profile of the order allows settling to profitability segments, you can enter an assignment to a profitability segment when you create the settlement rule.

Features

To enter an assignment to a profitability segment for a settlement, choose to call up the dialog box Assignment to a Profitability Segment (the assignment screen). The assignment screen contains the CO-PA characteristics that you can choose from to specify the profitability segment. During Customizing, you can create a characteristics group to appear in this dialog box and assign the group to the business transaction KABK (settlement account assignment). The characteristic group defines which characteristics are displayed for selection.

To simplify the selection of similar, frequently entered combinations of characteristics, you can create entry aids. For more information, see the section Entry Aids for Assignments to Profitability Segments.

Other characteristics are derived automatically from the characteristics you enter (see also Characteristic Derivation). A profitability segment number is assigned to the combination of assigned and derived characteristics.

You can assign 100% of the values to one profitability segment (as shown in the graphic below). Alternatively, you can distribute the values to several profitability segments on a percentage basis

You can settle orders and projects online or in the background. You can run a simulation settlement or perform an update. The result of the settlement is stored in a log. For further information on settlement rules and performing settlement, see the documentation on settlement in Internal Orders.

The system creates a line item and updates the segment level for each item of the settlement rule that is posted to a profitability segment. In costing-based CO-PA, each value settled is assigned to the value field specified in the PA transfer structure. Each value can be assigned separately to two value fields for the fixed or variable components.

In account-based CO-PA, the costs are settled to the settlement cost elements specified in the allocation structure of the order or project. For more information, see the description of settlement rules in the online documentation for Internal Orders or PS Projects System .

The line item created in CO-PA can be displayed in the application menu under Information system ® Display line item list ® Actual or under Actual postings ® Display line items. You can select the line items you want to see by certain criteria, such as the author or the date created.

The following graphic uses an example to illustrate how an order is settled: