You may define profit centers and company codes independently of each another. In a company code, you can assign transactions to one or more business areas. You can post a business area to several company codes and use it for cross-company-code reporting.

The R/3 System uses a combination of plant and division to assign the relevant business area. When you use the R/3 System to automatically draw up accounts for business areas, you can assign only one business area to a combination of plant and division. Plants and divisions can be assigned and combined in several different ways.

When drawing up accounts for a business area, you can include costs from several cost centers.

You can assign a cost center to one business area to which all costs of the cost center can be charged.

To compile business-area-specific financial statements for the company code to which the cost center is assigned, you must assign this cost center to a business area. You can then charge expenditure from the cost center to this business area.

You can charge the amounts that arise from the business transactions of several sales areas to one business area.

You can assign a business area to a sales area and charge the amounts that arise from the business transactions of the sales area to this business area.

For consolidation purposes, a consolidation business area may comprise several local business areas. One consolidation business area can contain a business area, also for consolidation purposes.