Using Variants in Online and Batch ARun 
Whenever you start a program in which selection screens are defined, the system displays a set of input fields for database-specific and program-specific selections. To select a certain set of data, you enter an appropriate range of values. If you often run the same program with the same set of selections, you can save the values in a selection set called a variant.
Note
You can create any number of variants for any program in which selection screens are defined. Variants are assigned exclusively to the program for which they were created.
Variants in Order Allocation Run
You can maintain variants in order allocation run using the online ARun transaction ARUN or transaction ARUN_VARIANT. These variants can be used during online (dialog mode) and batch (background processing) ARun.
On the Variant Attributes tab page, if you select the Only for background processing checkbox, you cannot use these variants during an online ARun. However, all variants selected for online ARun, can be used during a batch ARun.
For more information about defining variants, see Variant Maintenance in SAP Help Portal.