On the Characteristics tab page, the system displays a list of all the available characteristics. You can select those characteristics in the characteristics list which you want to use for your analysis, and add them to your report using the arrow keys. These are the drill-down characteristics, which you can navigate through freely in the report list.

The systems proposes characteristics depending on settings made in the field catalog (see Customizing). The settings made here determine - for each individual characteristic - whether it will be proposed when you are choosing characteristics. With Profitability Analysis reports, an additional column indicates whether each individual characteristic is article-related, customer-related or another type of characteristic. The type of characteristic displayed depends on the settings made in the table which the report accesses.

Here, you can also determine that a characteristic must be selected. In this case, the selection is only displayed in the report definition. It cannot therefore be changed. It cannot therefore be changed. If a key figure has been selected, for which the currency is dependent on a certain characteristic, this characteristic is automatically added to the characteristics selected by you. For example, if you have selected the key figure 'Sales in company code currency' the currency-bearing characteristic is now 'company code'. It will be mandatory to enter the characteristic which determines the currency, which must therefore be limited to an explicit value.

The characteristics can be proposed in characteristic groups. These groups are also created in Customizing. If there is no entry field for characteristic groups, this means that no characteristic group has yet been defined in Customizing.