In this step, you specify whether a characteristic in CO-PA is used to create profitability segments.
Characteristics that are used to create profitability segments are available for the information system and in planning, for example.
Characteristics that are not involved in the creation of profitability segments remain in their line item in CO-PA.
Frequently occurring characteristics that rarely bear the same value (such as the sales order number for a repetitive manufacturer) can thus be excluded from the creation of your profitability segment. In this way, you can improve the performance of your profitability analysis considerably.
Furthermore, you can perform profitability analysis at the customer group level or at the product group level by ceasing to use customers or products in that analysis.
Note
Before you execute the first transfer of productive data to
Profitability Analysis, you should make the appropriate setting specifying
which characteristics should be involved in creating profitability segments.
The only type of change that you can make subsequently is the deactivation of
more characteristics for the determination of a profitability segment. If you
later include a characteristic in the determination process, your CO-PA data
will then be incomplete for all affected characteristics.
Instead of excluding characteristics generally, you have the option of excluding a characteristic under certain conditions and thus define exceptions for how characteristics are used. In this way, make-to-order manufacturers with a spare parts business, for example, can exclude the spare parts business from their analyses, or wholesale manufacturers with a large number of customers can restrict their analysis at the customer level to key customers. The purpose of this function is to reduce the amount of created profitability segments by updating in detail only those values that are relevant for a particular analysis.
Note
This function is a purely technical function with which to reduce the number
of profitability segments. It is intended for allow users with large data
volumes to optimize their system performance. It should be used with caution
because it is usually not possible to reverse its effects: these can be
undesirable if the function is applied incorrectly. If you want to use the
function, you should first read the section
Exceptions concerning segment-level characteristics, which
contains a detailed description of the function, with examples.
Along with "sales order", the origin terms "order", "WBS element" and "cost object" should not be used as characteristics in the formation of profitability segments. Thus, when you create a new operating concern, the relevant table is automatically set so that the following characteristics are not used to form the profitability segments:
All other characteristics - including "Customer" and "Product" - are used and therefore are available for profitability reports, planning, and account assignments to profitability segments, for example. No exceptions are defined by default.
If you need to make a different setting to these, change the entries accordingly. In this case, you should check the index to the object table, expecially if you exclude the characteristics "Customer" or "Product". By defining an index that is most optimally reconciled to how the segment-level characteristics are to be used, you can improve performance considerably. For more detailed information about indexes, see the application documentation for Profitability Analysis and choose Technical Aspects of Profitability Analysis -> Index Support for Determination of Segment Numbers.
To avoid performance problems, we recommend the exclusion of characteristics that occur frequently, have a different value with each posting (such as "Automobile chassis number") and are thus not relevant for analysis.
Specify which characteristics of your operating concern should be used to form profitability segments. You do this by choosing the option "costing-based" or "costing-/acct-based". If a characteristic should not be used, select "not used".