Allocating Activities Directly (SAP Library - Profitability Analysis (COPA))

Allocating Activities Directly

Use

It is possible to allocate the costs for internal activities directly to profitability segments. To do so, you need to specify the sender and receiver along with the quantity of the activity provided. This quantity is automatically valuated with the planned price for that activity type, and the resulting amount is credited to the cost center providing the activity and debited to the receiver profitability segment.

In this way, the man hours of a sales employee, for example, can be posted directly to the specific customer groups or divisions for which the service was provided. This does not necessitate the use of cost centers or orders.

You can allocate activities to profitability segments directly on the detail screen for activity allocation or on a list screen. The allocation updates both costing-based and account-based CO-PA, provided that both are active.

Prerequisites

You should have maintained the PA transfer structure CO in CO-PA Customizing by choosing Flows of actual values ® Transfer overhead ® Direct/indirect allocation of activities ® Maintain PA Transfer Structure for Template and Activity Allocation.

Activities

To allocate internal activities, choose Actual postings ® Activity allocation from the application menu for Cost Center Accounting.

On the initial screen, you need to enter a screen variant, which defines the structure of the list screen. By entering a suitable screen variant, you can specify a sender cost center, the activity quantity, and a receiver profitability segment for each line.

From the initial screen, you can choose to call up a list screen or a detail screen.

On the detail screen, you can specify a profitability segment as the receiver by selecting the Profit. segment field. Then when you press ENTER, the system displays a dialog box in which you can specify the characteristic values to which you want to allocate the activity. You can influence the structure of this dialog box by assigning a characteristic group to the business transaction RKL. You do this in Customizing.

Once you have made your assignment and confirmed your entries, the Ass’d to prof.seg. check box is selected to indicate that the assignment has been made.

If you want to allocate a number of activities to profitability segments, you can do this more quickly by calling up the list screen.

As on the detail screen, you need to call up the dialog box for assigning a profitability segment. Again, a special check box indicates that a profitability segment has already been assigned.

For further information on internal activity allocation such as how the activity prices for valuating activities are determined or how to define screen variants see the section Allocating Activities Directly .

Postings Across Company Codes and Business Areas

The characteristics "Company code" and -- where required by the system -- "Business area" must be specified for allocation to profitability segments, unless they are set automatically by means of a user parameter. The company code and the business area of the profitability segment may differ from those of the sender cost center. The cross-company or cross-business-area activities which result from this are stored in the "reconciliation ledger". If necessary, you can create corresponding reconciliation postings in Financial Accounting at the end of the period. (For more information on cross-company and cross-business-area postings, see the documentation Cost and Revenue Element Accounting ).

To assign the costs to value fields, you first need to maintain the PA transfer structure CO in Customizing for costing-based Profitability Analysis. PA transfer structure CO contains the assignment of costs and quantities to the value fields in Profitability Analysis.

If account-based Profitability Analysis is active, costs are updated there under the settlement cost element specified for the relevant activity type.

Before you can allocate activities directly to Profitability Analysis, the controlling area you are working in must be activated. You do this in Customizing.