Cycles (SAP Library - Profitability Analysis (COPA))

Cycles

Definition

A cycle controls how assessment or indirect activity allocation are processed. All the relevant information about the senders, receivers, sender rules, receiver rules and tracing factors is contained in Segments.

The individual key for a cycle is made up its name and the initial date.

Use

In Profitability Analysis (CO-PA), you use a cycle to allocate cost center costs or process costs using assessment or indirect activity allocation to CO-PA.

Structure

A cycle contains one or several segments describing combinations of senders and receivers that are to be processed together to CO-PA.

The amount of time required to execute a cycle and the amount of data created depend largely on the following:

The number of segments
The number of sender cost centers/sender processes
The number of receivers
The type of database selection
The structure of the cycle

Example

A cycle consists of 100 segments. In each segment, two cost centers are distributed to the independent characteristics Customer (10,000 characteristic values) and Product (1000 characteristic values) based on variable percentages. Each customer buys 5 products per period. This means that each sender distributes to 50,000 profitability segments.

Thus the system creates 100 x 2 x 50,000 = 10,000,000 line items per period. If each record contains 1150 bytes (approximately 50 value fields), the resulting data volume is about 10 GB.

This cycle cannot be executed!

Note the following recommendations:

You should optimize the structure of a cycle for both possible types of database selection, and then use this access strategy to execute the cycle.

This means that the characteristics for the receiver objects should overlap as much as possible in the segments of a cycle that is to undergo selection by cycle. You must not, for example, define a cycle in which one segment distributes to Division and another segment distributes to Product. Moreover, such a cycle should not consist of more than 100 segments.

In the segments of a cycle that is to undergo selection by segment, the characteristics for the receiver objects should overlap as little as possible.

Do not distribute to more than one independent characteristic at the lowest level (either "Customer" or "Product").

Note

During allocation to Profitability Analysis, the order of the segments in a cycle does not affect the results of the cycle in any way.

Example

A cycle contains two segments, both of which credit the same cost center: segment 1 works with fixed amounts (sender rule "2"), while segment 2 works with the posted amounts (sender rule "1").

This assessment has the following result: The cost center is credited the amount posted and the fixed amount. If you just want to credit the cost center with the remaining amount, you need to create two cycles and execute them one after the other.

In theory, you could create one cycle for transferring all cost centers or processes to Profitability Analysis. However, for performance reasons as well as from the point of view of allocation, it may make more sense to create several cycles, and process them sequentially in the order entered. The system ensures that one cycle has been completed before the next cycle starts.

You should divide your assessment into several cycles if you want to allocate different areas of your organization to CO-PA at different times. It also has the advantage that when errors or changes occur, you only need to repeat the affected cycles.

To define a cycle to assess actual overhead to Profitability Analysis, go to Customizing and choose Flows of Actual values ® Transfer Overhead ® Assess Cost Center Costs / Process Costs ® Define Structure of Cost Center Assessment / Process Cost Assessment.

To define a cycle to allocate the actual overhead of indirect activities to Profitability Analysis, choose in Customizing Flows of Actual values ® Transfer Overhead ® Set Up Indirect Activity Allocation of Cost Centers/Processes.

To define a cycle in Planning for assessment, choose in Customizing for CO-PA Planning ® Integrated Planning ® Transfer Cost Center Planning/Process Planning ® Assess Cost Center Costs / Process Costs ® Define Structure of Cost Center Assessment/Process Cost Assessment.

To define a cycle in Planning for indirect activity allocation, choose in Customizing for CO-PA Planning ® Integrated Planning ® Transfer Cost Center Planning / Process Planning ® Direct/Indirect Activity Allocation ® Set Up Indirect Allocation of Activities from Cost Centers /Processes.

See also:

Functions for Maintaining Cycles