Show TOC
Assign Costing
Keys to Any Characteristics
The steps
let you assign costing keys to individual
products or material types.
In cases where the product-dependent or
material-dependent callup of material cost estimates in Product Cost
Accounting is not flexible enough to meet your requirements, you can determine
the costing keys using your own "strategy" for the
"flexible assignment of costing keys".
This "strategy" is taken to
determine the costing keys, generally using
user-defined assignment tables.
As in characteristic derivation in CO-PA, you can also work with table
lookups or your own customer enhancements when
setting up the "strategy".
You can use the following
Step Methods to define a strategy:
I. User-Defined
Assignment Tables
As with the predefined assignment tables for
products and material types, these user-defined assignment
tables let you assign costing keys separately for each point
of valuation, record type and plan
version. In addition to these source fields, which are automatically
contained in each assignment table, you can specify up to three
characteristics in your operating concern as source fields for determining the
costing key. Thus you can assign costing keys not only to certain "products"
or "materials types", but to any combination of values of any
characteristics. For example, you could define an assignment table to
assign costing keys to specific combinations of "company code", "plant" and
"product group".
If you have created several assignment tables,
the system respects the order in which they are entered when it searches
through them for valid assignment rules.
II. Table
Lookups
A table lookup allows you to
access individual data records in any SAP table and to transfer the contents
of individual table fields to
Target Fields of the type
USERTEMP .The USERTEMP fields that have been filled by a
table lookup can then be used in a subsequent strategy step as
source fields for an assignment rule.
Therefore, the combination of table lookup
and assignment rule means that you can use the data in fields
from any SAP table as the basis for determining costing keys.
III. Customer
Enhancements
To set up a
strategy to determine costing keys flexibly, you can use the
enhancement "COPA0002" and the component
"EXIT_SAPLKEAB_004". It is possible to include a link to this
enhancement wherever and as often as you want in the
strategy since the
step identifier ensures that the different links are not
confused. For more information about how to determine costing keys using
user-defined user-exits, see the documentation for the SAP enhancement
"COPA0002" or see the function module documentation for the
function module "EXIT_SAPLKEAB_004".
The assignment tables that you
have defined and the customer enhancements make up the
strategy for the flexible definition of costing
keys.
When creating your own assignment
tables/table lookups or
enhancements , observe the following:
1. To create an
assignment table, you can also choose from
other source fields in addition to the characteristics in your
operating concern. For details, see the F1 field help in the transaction for
creating assignment tables.
2. By
specifying multiple costing keys as
If you wish to run
alternative valuation instead of parallel valuation, you
first need to set the flag
Exclusive access to cost estimate when defining the costing
keys.
3. In addition,
you can specify a special
valuation plant that should be used to access the cost estimate
from product costing. This means that the plant found in the CO-PA line item
does not always need to be the plant used for costing purposes.
If you wish to
access cost estimates simultaneously from several
plants , we recommend that you firmly specify the
valuation plant to be used to access the cost estimate when you
define the costing keys.
1. You can
specify a special
control indicator as a target field in an assignment table to
avoid receiving an error message during valuation whenever the system cannot
find a cost estimate from product costing. Note that by default, the system
always displays an error message when this
occurs.
2. In the
attributes for the assignment table, you can select the
"Display error message" flag to specify that the system should automatically
display an error message if no valid assignment rule entry is found in this
table when the system tries to find the costing key.
3. You may want
to avoid a product already successfully valuated using
product costing from being valuated again with a price found using a costing
sheet. If so, you can define an assignment rule with a target field "
VALUE_FLD1" to ensure that the value field assigned to the
condition type is cleared before the CO-PA line item is updated.
4. If your
operating concern stores line items using transfer prices according to the
profit center viewpoint in addition to the standard "legal" view, you should
include the field
ITEM_TYPE as an additional source field in the structure of the
assignment table. Note that all entries in assignment tables that do not
contains this field are interpreted as referring to line items created
according to the legal view.
Example
You want to access cost estimates from product
costing by company code and material type. You want to valuate using four
costing keys, while explicitly specifying the plant that the system should use
for finding the cost estimate. In addition, you want to be able to define
whether an error message should be displayed if no cost estimate is found. All
assignment rule entries should be valid for a specific period of
time.
To implement this example, proceed as
follows:
1. Call up the
function: "Flexible Assignment of Costing Keys: Change
Strategy".
2. Choose
Edit -> Create step to reach the screen "Flexible
Assignment of Costing Keys: Change Rule".
3. On this
screen, enter a name for the assignment rule. Then add the fields "Company
code" (CO-PA-BUKRS ) and "Material type"
'GLOBAL-MTART') to the existing fixed source fields "Point of
valuation" (GLOBAL-BWFKT), "Record type"
(GLOBAL-VRGAR), and "Plan version"
GLOBAL-VERSI).
4. For the
target fields, you can specify, in addition to the "First costing key (CO-PA)"
field (
GLOBAL-KALAW1) the fields GLOBAL-KALAW2,
GLOBAL-KALAW3 and GLOBAL-KALAW4, plus the
"Valuation plant" (
GLOBAL-WERKS) and "Error handling" (
GLOBAL-XMES_FLG) fields.
5. Select the
"Entries should be maintained for specific dates" indicator, and then
save.
6. Once you
have saved, you can maintain the assignment entries by choosing
"Maintain rule entries ". Or you can leave the "Change Rules"
screen and maintain the entries later from the "Display Strategy" screen.
Activities
First define the assignment tables you require.
If you define more than one assignment table, note that the system processes
these in the order in which you enter them, from top to bottom. Once you have
defined the necessary tables, you can maintain assignment rule entries for
each assignment table.
Further
Notes
In order to valuate CO-PA line items using
material cost estimates in
Product Cost Planning, you must define your valuation strategy so
that the system accesses product costing for the desired point of
valuation.
If you are valuating using more than one
costing key, note that a value field can only be filled by valuation if it is
empty. In other words, each value field can only be filled once, and is never
overwritten.
The system follows certain rules for
determining which costing keys to use:
1. First it
checks whether one or more costing keys has been assigned to the product being
valuated. If so, it valuates the data using only those
costing keys.
2. If no
costing key is assigned to the product, the system checks whether any costing
keys have been assigned to the material type of the product. If so, the data
is valuated only using those costing keys.
3. If no
costing keys have been assigned to the material type, the system then checks
whether any costing keys have been assigned to other characteristics using the
flexible assignment function. If no costing keys are found in this manner, the
transaction cannot be valuated using a material cost
estimate.
Likewise, no valuation is carried out if an entry exists in
one of these assignment tables but does not contain a costing
key.