Maintaining investment programs in the enterprise organization hierarchy offers the following advantages over maintaining the investment program structure:

• When you create new investment program positions, they inherit their organizational units (for example, company code, cost center) from the nodes of the enterprise organization.
• A restructuring of the enterprise organization does not result in duplicate maintenance in the investment program. Changes in the hierarchy of the enterprise organization are reflected automatically in the structure of the investment program. Changes on the nodes of the enterprise organization are passed on to the investment program positions.
• You can make assignments to the enterprise organization time-dependent. This means that positions of an investment program can be assigned to different nodes of the enterprise organization at different times, and thereby also have a time dependent assignment to cost centers, for example.

SAP recommends that you always use this function together with a Controlling (CO) hierarchy (cost center hierarchy or profit center hierarchy). In this way, you ensure that the structure of your investment program corresponds to that CO hierarchy. You maintain the enterprise organization in Controlling, not in Investment Management.

You assign investment program positions to nodes of the enterprise organization. You can

• Create a new program position on a node of the enterprise organization
• Assign existing, unassigned program positions to a node of the enterprise organization

For any given point in time, only one position of a given investment program can be assigned to each node of the enterprise organization. However, another program position of a different investment program can be assigned to the node of the enterprise organization at the same time. In a detail screen, you can display all enterprise organization nodes that are valid in a given time period.

When you create new program positions, the system initially treats them as top positions (that is, program positions without any program positions above them in the hierarchy). They are also displayed as such in structure maintenance. The system does not generate a new program structure, in which the newly created program positions are also displayed, until after the next generation run and subsequent saving. The same also applies to all other changes in the assignments between program positions and enterprise organization nodes.

You can delete both the assignments of program positions to enterprise organization nodes (that is, make time limits on the assignment) as well as the program positions themselves. You can only delete program positions that have neither subordinate objects (measures, appropriation requests or other program positions) nor any budget.

During each generation run, the system automatically copies the organizational units from the enterprise organization nodes to the program positions assigned to them. The organizational units then cannot be changed on the program positions. The system adopts any changes that you make in structure maintenance during the next generation run. The master data that is copied from parent positions (superior program positions) serves as default values that can be changed.

First carry out the Open a New Approval Year from the Enterprise Organization function. If there is no program definition yet, the system creates one. Then choose the Carryforward of Measures, Approp. Requests and Values function. During the fiscal year change, the system uses the same logic for the inheritance as it does during the generation run in the enterprise organization. The difference is that the system creates a new investment program for the new fiscal year (target investment program) and assigns the program positions to the enterprise organization nodes.

Key date for the inheritance of organizational units:

• When the generation date is in the approval year of the new program, the system uses the generation date.
• When the generation date is not in the approval year of the new investment program, the system uses the first day in the approval year of the new program.